


Fire Eyes

by GoldenSnowflake



Category: Ed Edd n Eddy
Genre: A Lot Of Weird Weather, Anal Sex, Canon Universe, Eventual Smut, Lots of Literature References, M/M, Minor OC apperances, Multi, Post-Canon, Sexual Tension, Use of Poetry, awkward teenagers, hopefully pretty in character, yeah there's lots of smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:16:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 37,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1406224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldenSnowflake/pseuds/GoldenSnowflake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And the only solace I find is that you and the rest of your ilk will never grace the halls of human history with your wit or ingenuity. You will die, and your absence of an impact on the course of the human race will doom you to be forgotten. You will amount to nothing." Double Dee says what's on his mind, and Kevin holds him to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Adult Children on Wednesdays

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, folks. Welp, I don't have much to say for myself.
> 
> I DIDN'T CLIMB ABOARD THE BANDWAGON. IT RAN ME OVER AND I'M STUCK IN ITS GRILL.
> 
> Wagons don't have grills, do they?
> 
> Huh.
> 
> Uh, anyway, the first story mentioned is A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner. (I plan to warn you ahead of time that I'm going to be referencing particular stories so I won't spoil them if you're interested in reading them yourself.) The other one is The Cask of Amontillado by Poe.
> 
> What's this? Am I coercing people into reading classic literature? I really have become a monster. o3o
> 
> Anyway, I try not to dwell on them any more than is necessary for the plot, so bear with me if you're so inclined.

The day had been an exceptionally normal one, although the tension building amongst the student body from being trapped within their prison of bricks and mortar was threatening to burst the windows. Christmas break was over and New Year’s Day had passed in the blink of an eye. Finals were too far off to be a threat and too close to allow anyone to smile honestly. The violence with which the two hundred adolescents shoved themselves from their seats at 2:30 could easily have been mistaken for a small-scale earthquake.

The mush that had once been Peach Creek’s football field meant that there would, again, be no practice, leaving Kevin edging from listless toward aggravation. He waved Nazz off, earning an irritated scoff from one of his teammates lingering near her, and unchained his bike from the rack in the parking lot.

When he saw the scrawny genius humming and trotting down the sidewalk, almost home already because _honors students get out a period early_ , it didn’t occur to the athlete _not_ to pick on him. The definition of cliché that he was, Double Dee was clad in an oversized sweater with a stupid band of diamonds wrapping around the chest, reading a thick, purple book, one he’d seen kids tossing in their lockers for the past month and a half.

In the span of two seconds, he had steered his bike across the road and leaned over the battered sidewalk, smacking the paperback from the genius’s hands before Eddward knew anyone was beside him. It clattered onto the asphalt, spilling yellowed pages from its fragile spine. There was a strangled cry as he swerved away, and instead of pedaling off, the redhead opted for skidding to a halt on the other side of the street to watch the Edd’s reaction.

The black-capped kid was standing still, his hands balled into fists and his teeth bared. His face was staining red and, startling Kevin, there seemed to be tears in his eyes. He sucked in a breath, let it out sharply, then inhaled once more. His voice trembled as he spoke.

“Do you know why the world is the way it is? Because adult children like you, _Kevin_ , are content to live your merry lives completely ignorant to the true meaning of humanity - of self-awareness - of philosophy!” He paused to suck in a breath, shoulders drawn up tight and his tiny fists shaking. “And the only solace I find is that you and the rest of your ilk will never grace the halls of human history with your wit or ingenuity. You will die, and your absence of an impact on the course of the human race will doom you to be forgotten. You will amount to _nothing_.”

Kevin gaped at the scrawny, black-capped boy, his hands hanging limply at his sides. Eddward spun on his heel and stormed, sweater diamonds and all, onto his porch, slamming the door behind him.

“Geez,” Kevin finally found his voice to say, finding his handles and nudging the kickstand back up. “Dork.”

-x-

The petite high-school scholar spent the next approximate week undeterred from his studies, writing reviews on several dark-matter articles, applying for a plethora of scholarships, and testing out different detergents and taking notes on how they made his clothing feel. Ed was out of school due to food poisoning (Double Dee suspected that he had attempted to eat something in the wood shop, as this had proven to be the culprit the last two times,) and Eddy was grounded for being caught with magazines that were part of his class on human anatomy, he _swore_. The chill of winter was ebbing away in bursts of green and patches of damp sunlight. He strode up to his door on Thursday afternoon, clutching the mail to his chest and fumbling in the zip-pocket of his bag for his house keys. He certainly wasn’t expecting a tall, lanky redhead to be leaned against the pale gold siding of his house, hands shoved in baggy pockets, and thus was not prepared at all for him. Eddward let out a profoundly undignified shriek.

“Chill, shrimp,” came Kevin’s cool retort, his bored expression downcast.

“I am obligated to ask what you are doing loitering on my meticulously manicured lawn.” The black-capped boy’s eyes were enormous despite the anger in his voice.

“I was just thinkin’.”

Knees trembling ever so slightly as he awaited a satisfying explanation, Eddward blinked, molding the stack of envelopes to the front of his auburn jacket. The quarterback kicked at a dandelion that was shriveled up on the sidewalk. “I’m kinda hard on you and your dweeby friends, and you were pretty pissed the other day when I busted up your book. I figure since ya spend so much time dorking out over those things…” Hesitating, he shifted his weight from one leg to the other, shrugging tightly. “There’s gotta be something to all that Hemingway crap.”

Eddward’s jaw dropped before he could stop it, and he snapped it closed. “Why … yes. I personally believe that there is merit to the western literary canon.”

“So you could explain that stuff to me, right? Since I’m takin’ the class you’re in next semester.”

“O-of course.” When Kevin’s disinterested eyes met his, Double Dee forced down the nervousness rising like bile in his throat, swallowing thickly. “I wasn’t expecting company, but … if you’d be willing to wait for a bit, I could make sandwiches…”

“Nah. It’s cool. ‘M hangin’ out with Rolf today anyways.”

The silence between them was completely empty, the cool air adrift with a thousand specific nuances of disbelief and discomfort.

“Just plan on it next week. Like Wednesday.” It took the redhead’s prompting for the genius to realize that a response was merited. “You good with Wednesday?”

“Uh, y-yes!” At Eddward’s chirp Kevin nodded once. “Yes, absolutely. Wednesday is, in fact, ideal. I look forward to our meeting of minds.”

Heart thumping in his chest and hands so clammy that the mail was warping beneath them, Double Dee smiled his most brilliant smile. The jock looked at his shifting feet, then up, gaze resting somewhere off to the left of his head.

“Sweet. I’ll meet ya here, I guess.”

Again, he nodded, and in a tense movement the redhead lurched from the wall and returned to his bike. Eddward swallowed again, measuring his pulse, and pulled the keys out of his bag.

-x-

The following days passed oddly for Double Dee. Some hours passed normally, some were spend consumed with inexplicable anxiety, which the genius attributed to the load of coursework he was taking, despite the fact that the daunting pressure had always given him a sense of purpose before. Sometimes he thought that it was caused by Eddy, who had recently decided that _cunt_ was the most beautiful and applicable word ever invented, prompting at least one lecture a day by Eddward on how misogyny was perpetrated by men who were so insecure in their masculinity that they had to belittle the opposite gender to feel adequate. Eddy would roll his eyes and stab at his macaroni salad, and Ed, in all his genuine delight, would remind their short friend that soggy gym tees were, indeed, unnecessary. Occasionally Eddward would suspect that his upcoming studying session was the source of his nerves, which he supposed made sense. Kevin had been, as Eddy would insist, the bane of the trio’s existence for several years, though it could be argued that Eddy’s constant patronizing of the rest of the cul-de-sac was why everyone was so frequently irritated with the three. After they’d left to search for Eddy’s brother, there had been a noticeable shift in the group’s demeanor toward Eddward and his best friends, and now, there was very little interaction between himself and Kevin, if any at all.

It was profoundly strange for the multifaceted athlete to be petitioning him for academic enrichment now.

Excluding the few moments when he would wake up overcome with nervousness, his chest aflutter and his hands fisted in his neatly-made sheets, the weekend and the pair of days following resembled normal.

When the final bell rang on Wednesday afternoon, fear gripped him so tight that Eddward wasn’t sure he could stand without fainting.

“What’s the _matter_ with you, Sockhead?”

Muttering under his breath, Double Dee spared Eddy a quick glance as he stepped carefully through the flood of bodies crashing down the hallway.

“Double Dee is less here than a Chinaman on Neptune,” Ed observed, earning a nod from the shorter of the pair.

“Are ya coming over tonight, Double Dee? You haven’t given me a straight answer all week. Is it because of that stupid math test you were yammerin’ on about all weekend?”

“I just would like to be alone tonight,” Eddward finally said, his voice rising to an audible level. Lying about Kevin made a twinge of guilt twist in his gut, but it was easier than explaining that he was meeting the kid that Eddy despised more than watching the Home Shopping Channel with his grandma. “I’ll accompany you gentlemen to the movies on Friday, however, as scheduled.”

“Okay.” Eddy shrugged. “S’all you needed to say, Sockhead.”

Nobody was around when the genius reached his driveway, and Eddward let out a small, peculiar chuckle, stepping inside with relief. He shed his shoes and thoroughly washed his hands and face before changing into a fresh shirt and sweatpants, and he dawned a pair of socks that were delightfully fluffy from a washing in the detergent he had chosen as his favorite. He unpacked his book bag, finding the pencil in his desk drawer that was reserved for Wednesday homework, and as he sat down to open his math book, there was a knock at the door.

The mass of his stomach felt as if it had multiplied a thousand fold, causing it to crash through his torso and onto the floor.

It took a few moments of panicked breathing (in through the nose, out through the mouth) to convince the white blots of anxiety to recede from his vision at the prospect of the towering bully looming on his doorstep. Delicate fingers giving a shudder, Eddward grabbed the doorknob and pulled it open. “Why h-hello, Kevin.”

Clad in a collared zip-up jacket and his usual backwards cap, the redhead glanced up at the smaller kid’s face. “S’up dork?”

“I wasn’t convinced that you’d be coming,” Edd stated, forcing the flutter out of his words. “My apologies! Come in.”

Kevin kicked his shoes off, scooting them onto the mat next to the door. “Bike’s being repainted,” he explained gruffly, jerking the arm that was looped around a skateboard. “It okay if I…?”

“Oh, absolutely! Just leave it wherever you’d like. Can I interest you in some lemonade? A soda, perhaps?”

“Sure, whatever.” The black-capped boy backed up a step, smiling politely and wondering why the grime-covered wheels of the skateboard against the wall seemed like such a triviality at the moment. “Thanks,” his guest uttered awkwardly as he turned his back and hurried into the kitchen.

Upon returning with two sodas, one diet and one normal, Double Dee asked whether they should set up at his desk in his bedroom or out in the living room. “Living room’s fine” was the athlete’s reply, so the scholar grabbed two coasters and set their beverages down before padding wordlessly to his room to retrieve his textbook and a pad of paper.

“Well then, Kevin-” Edd seated himself on the opposite end of the couch from the boy with the looming presence, placing his book so its bottom was parallel with the coffee table’s edge. “What would you like to start with?”

The redhead sipped his pop, resting an ankle on a knee. “What’s in it?”

“The class is divided into three sections, the first being study of the short story, the second being poetry reading, and the third being a handful of famous plays.” Already he was beginning to feel a little more in-control of circumstances. “We could start with short stories, if you have no preference.”

“Sure. That’s fine.”

-x-x-x-

Kevin said very little as Eddward flipped through the table of contents and selected a few interesting stories. The first he chose was about an old woman who was strange and fat and disliked by the entire town. The redhead’s eyes fluttered shut, bored, as his impromptu tutor began to read, his delicate fingers sweeping across the pages. Kevin tuned in about halfway through, intrigued by the light in the younger nerd’s eyes, and forced himself to listen to the eager rise and fall of his small voice. She banged some guy and the townspeople had their panties in a bunch about it, then he disappeared one day. His interest was piqued when Edd turned a flimsy, translucent page and cleared his throat softly before setting into the last section. The chick got old and died, and she somehow had a slave up until this point who took off as soon as the men from town came knocking. Hearing the ‘n-word’ spill past the nerd’s lips made Kevin’s eyebrows pop up almost to the brim of his hat, but Double Dee kept reading. They went into her house and the blinds made everything look pink, and they followed the stench up to her bedroom.

The man who’d disappeared years ago was in her bed, rotted down to bones.

Eddward’s dark eyes flashed to him, a small smile flickering across his face. “A remarkable idea, isn’t it?”

The sincerity in his voice made Kevin sniff in amusement. “Sorta, I guess.”

A half-smile stretched across the scholar’s face. “You wouldn’t consider finding a man murdered and rotting away beside the neighborhood loon remarkable?”

“Well- yeah.” Kevin shrugged one shoulder and fidgeted. “But it’s not real. It’s just words.”

The expression on Eddward’s face was unlike anything he’d seen before. He grabbed a swatch of pages and flipped them to, evidently, exactly what he was looking for. Unseen, Kevin’s eyes widened. Double Dee cleared his throat and scooted despite the fact that his bottom went no closer to the coffee table.

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could; but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.”

“Oh my God.” The black-capped kid glanced up as Kevin scrubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes.

“Kevin, I must insist, this story in particular is-”

“Dude, come _on_. Did you just hear the words that came out of your mouth? I don’t think I can do this.”

“ _The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could._ ”

Eddward leaned forward, holding the book out and snapping it gently as if whipping the creases out of clean linen. Kevin’s mouth closed at the volume the dork’s voice had risen to. It was preposterous.

And interesting.

Kevin quieted down to listen as the smaller boy went on. The story was ridiculous and the writing was terrible, but the delight in his face as he read it was completely real. The jock tuned in and out of focus with the story, watching the animated boy through half-lidded eyes as the self-obsessed main character led his enemy through the tombs to a cask of wine before burying him alive with it.

Finishing with a flourish, Double Dee looked up at him. “That one was more appealing to one just dipping his toes into the pool of literary wealth, yes?”

“Ahh-” Rubbing the back of his head, Kevin avoided the other’s gaze. “Yeah, I guess. It was a little better. I mean … Edmond Allan Poe does all the creepy shit, right?”

“Edgar, Kevin.”

“Huh?”

“ _Edgar_ Allan Poe.”

“Oh.” Kevin stared at the ceiling, making an almost inaudible whistle into the awkward silence.

“But yes, Poe is known as the first author to truly capitalize on horror and the idea of insanity. He drew from his own experience quite a bit, having been adopted after his mother died, and after choosing frivolity over diligence and flunking out of college. He married his thirteen-year-old cousin who died of tuberculosis just over a decade later, and he drank himself into a stupor for the remainder of his life. He was found in a ditch, allegedly killed by a drug and alcohol overdose.”

The jock stared. “Wait. Seriously?”

“Yes,” nodded the black-haired boy. “His unhappiness is believed to be the source of his vivid and dark imagination.”

“So he didn’t, like, sit around listening to piano music all day in frilly pants?

“…no. He didn’t.”

“Dang.” The athlete reclined against the back of the couch and crossed his arms. “That’s pretty hardcore.”

“Indeed.” While his tone was calm, delight glimmered in the scholar’s dark eyes at his small victory. A sudden beep caused him to jump, and he raised his arm to inspect his watch with a childlike innocence. “My! Is it five already?”

“Guess I better bounce.” The redhead’s sudden movement as he climbed to his feet made Edd jolt again, a shrill noise escaping his lips. The shorter boy hopped up, elbows flying out as he rushed to the door. Kevin eyed him warily, hands stuffed in his pants pockets, and strode over to shove his feet into his shoes. It took everything in Double Dee not to wince at the redhead’s blatant disregard for the function of shoelaces.

“Thank you again for visiting … it’s always a pleasure to discuss literature with fellow classmates.” And it had been a worthwhile challenge explaining its worth to the least academically-oriented individual he knew, however brief and ineffective his attempts may have been. Kevin tucked his skateboard under his arm and straightened to his full height and a puff of cologne drifted by Eddward. Something cheap and popular, no doubt, but not the overpowering stench he was accustomed to gagging on as he weaved between hulking jocks in the halls at school. A bit lamely, Double Dee pulled open the door and allowed another polite smile to settle on his face. “I’ll see you at school.” Kevin’s stare was unreadable.

“Thanks, again, Double Dweeb.” He shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. “Whaddaya say, next week, same day?”

A genuine moment of confusion passed and Eddward only blinked at the jock. “A-ah, yes! Of course! Classic literature again, I presume?”

“Yeah.” The genius swallowed, gazing self-consciously up at the brooding athlete. “That’s cool. Thanks.”

“Farewell,” he called, waving at Kevin’s back as he dropped his board and accelerated swiftly towards the pavement. Eddward closed the door softly, locking it for the night, and turned to survey the spread of notes and unused pencils on the table. Strangely, tremors of anxiety seemed to be ebbing out into his limbs, and the boy sank to the floor, releasing a shaky sigh of relief.


	2. Yellow Wallpaper

The week completed as most do, in excruciatingly dull stretches interspersed between periods that passed too quickly to have adhered to the laws of space-time (including gaming, study halls, and sleeping.) Eddy, Ed and Double Dee saw the movie they’d been planning on all week, an offbeat drama that was half thriller and half bizarre comedy. Eddy was livid that the only flash of feminine skin in the movie was the one shown in every commercial, while Eddward was delighted by the peculiar delivery of the lines and the subtle moral at the end of the story. Ed commented gleefully on every car explosion and slung popcorn through the air as if acting out a strange and buttery interpretive dance.

May and Lee gave the three some trouble on Monday afternoon at the gas station and got the whole group of them kicked out. (The cashier had told Eddy he could come back to buy Trojans for his girlfriend once he was tall enough to ride roller coasters, and Double Dee was amazed that the police hadn’t been called at the screaming fit that had ensued as Ed dragged the shortest of the trio back towards the cul-de-sac.)

Tuesday was a little tense - Eddy made mention of the sitcom everybody was watching on Wednesday offhandedly, and Eddward had mumbled a reply that implied it was unlikely that he’d come over. He could tell from the grunt and the following silence that Eddy didn’t like that much.

Kevin had only crossed Double Dee’s vision a handful of times in the past few days despite the fact that his house was straight across the cul-de-sac - he realized that without observing the redhead’s appearances on a normal week, he had nothing to compare it to, of course, and went about his life. There was no need for apprehension, he reminded himself; Kevin had proven to be of no threat when they’d sat down to pour over material the week before. A little unenthusiastic, sure, but non-threatening.

On Wednesday, Eddward’s cardiovascular system elected to simulate a minor heart attack anyway.

Arriving home as swiftly as possible, Double Dee strode quickly around, straightening vases and dusting windowsills in anticipation of his student’s arrival. His masochistic side steered him to the fridge to grab a soda and he struggled to not think about the sodium and dyes as they bubbled down his throat. Being written off as an oddity was something he was quite accustomed to, but trying to sell an entire academic subject and all of its potential for enrichment to the epitome of cool, adolescent disinterest gave Edd a _tiny_ chance of success.

 _That_ was what frightened him.

At around 3:15, there were three solid knocks at the door. Double Dee turned from where he sat, hands clasped in front of his spread of books and notecards, and let out a puff of air before hurrying to get the door.

Kevin’s bike was propped between the siding and the neatly-trimmed hedges, and he gave a small, cool smile. “Sup, Dorko?”

“Oh, the ceiling, the stratosphere, et cetera. The usual.”

The only response to the genius’s quip was the peaking of one red eyebrow. The jock shouldered past him, plodding into the house. “So what’ve ya got lined up for today?”

“A variety of things, actually.” Eddward followed him to the couch, seating himself momentarily before springing back up like he’d sat on a needle. “Oh - would you like something to drink?”

“Gimmie a Diet this time, actually.” He threw one long arm over the back of the sofa, reclining. For some silly reason, Double Dee was surprised by his request, and he trotted into the kitchen to retrieve a can from the fridge. He wasn’t aware of Kevin’s vaguely displeased look until he had placed the unopened can on the coaster nearest his guest and took his seat. When he met Kevin’s gaze, the redhead glanced at his pop and then at Eddward’s half-empty one. “What? I’m not good enough for a bendy straw?”

“Certainly,” the genius squawked after a split-second of silent disbelief. “My apologies! I imagined you’d find it undignified…”

Back on his feet, Double Dee stared at Kevin, and Kevin stared back. A flush rose from his shoulders all the way to his forehead as Eddward hurried back to retrieve a yellow-and-white striped straw from the Ziploc baggie in the cupboard. The athlete looked like he wasn’t going to shift from his current position, so with a quick, unsure glance, Edd stuck it in himself.

“All right, then.” Seating himself for _the final time, darn-it_ , he clapped his small hands together. “Shall we begin?”

“Lead the way, man,” came Kevin’s reply.

-x-

The afternoon passed easily enough: Double Dee would read a story through, then pause and wait for Kevin to supply some sort of reaction. He would then go back through the words, pausing to observe possible double meanings and to explain how the author may have been influenced by his own life in the adding of particular details. He made sure to look up at Kevin’s face as he asked what Kevin thought, and forcing the athlete to give believable responses masked the nerves that vibrated just under his skin at forcing such assertiveness. A story about a woman who died of a feeble heart was revealed to have died from realizing that her husband _hadn’t_ been killed in a train wreck. One that chronicled a woman’s decline into madness was actually an argument by the author against “the rest cure,” which Double Dee explained as women being forced to lie down for weeks with as little stimulation as possible to help with their anxiety. “You’re serious? Actual doctors told people to do that?”

“Frequently,” Double Dee responded.

“That’s … pretty fucked up.”

While nonplussed with the redhead’s wording, the genius found himself smiling at the mild interest roused in Kevin’s voice. “Some fiction is just that. Other stories such as this one were an attempt to disagree with accepted medical or political facts.”

Grunting, the athlete shrugged. “I see where you’re coming from.” His gaze lingered on the blank television screen across the room, expression betraying little.

Not fully satisfied that he was holding his guest’s attention, Double Dee cleared his throat and turned his focus back to the small print on the pages. “Have you, by chance, ever heard of Margaret Atwood?”

“Nope,” said the redhead curtly. There was a shifting of fabric, though, and the jock had settled closer. Taking this as an invitation - or at least, not as outright rejection - Eddward turned to the table of contents and then back into the thick of the pages.

-x-

“So what do your buddies think of our study arrangements?”

Eddward was gathering up pop cans and straightening his notecards. He turned to look at his neighbor, leaning against the wall beside the door. “Ed and Eddy think I’m working on an essay for the Peach Creek Chronicle. They hold a contest every month.”

“Why’d you lie to them?”

The petite male’s heart rate increased and he felt his grip tighten on the can in either hand. He blinked.

“I…” Swallowing thickly, he forced his brain to construct an answer. “Well. You know what a short fuse Eddy has. If he found out that I was spending time with you, I would never hear the end of it.”

“Yeah,” Kevin replied, something impossible to interpret in his eyes. Eddward turned, tossing the cans in the recycling bin under the sink. Kevin had his shoes on when he returned and was standing on the threshold, looking out into the dark.

“Kevin?”

The redhead peered over a broad shoulder at Double Dee.

“Excuse me for being forward, but…” The jock turned around, chewing on his lip as his tutor fidgeted. “If this is an attempt to make up for my book a few weeks ago, it isn’t necessary. I don’t harbor any hard feelings. I apologize for yelling at you as well - it was uncalled for.”

“It’s not about that, man.” Double Dee blinked, surprised, but the figure on his doorstep said no more. Finally, he turned and grabbed his bike handles, starting down the sidewalk. “Did you mean it?”

“Uh- what?”

Kevin leveled his stare at the genius again. “What you said to me that day. Did you mean it?”

Startled beyond any ability to mask himself with politeness, Eddward murmured, “Yes.”

Kevin sniffed in amusement. “Then don’t apologize.” He hopped on his bike despite the fact that his house was around three hundred feet away. “Next Wednesday, dork.”

Eddward shut the door and stared at his socks. His throat was dry, but swallowing didn’t help. Electing to have a cup of tea (for his throat, not his nerves, of course,) he went back into the kitchen.


	3. Stiletto Threats

“So when are you gonna tell me what’s up?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea what you mean.”

Frowning so hard that Double Dee _felt_ it, Eddy leaned over and slowly closed the genius’s book. Double Dee sighed softly, giving in and meeting the short boy’s gaze. “Seriously. You’re not as mysterious as you think.”

“Would you mind terribly repeating the question, Eddy?”

“He’s being a sassy pants, Eddy.” Having made his contribution, Ed rolled back across the carpet towards the opposite side of the room.

“Why are you being so stubborn, Double Dee? Do you think you gotta hide something from us?”

Eddward attempted to open his book once more, and Eddy gently pushed the cover back down. In a futile attempt to close the subject, the genius glared at his charismatic companion. As if the pinnacle of maturity, Eddy crossed his arms and sighed, feigning offense.

“I’m working on something. It isn’t particularly significant.”

“If that was true, you’d’ve told us about it already.”

The dark-haired boy stared across the room, where Ed had gently collided with the wall. “It isn’t,” he insisted softly.

“You’re a serial killer,” Eddy guessed, earning another unamused look from his brilliant friend. “You’re a drag queen. Your parents are secretly spies for the Russian mafia.”

The scholar considered outlining why the last option made utterly no sense, but thought better of it. “Go on, I’m sure you’ll get it eventually.”

“The government is using your brain to create a super weapon … an army of Double Dees with big, bulgy heads that shoot sparks and stuff.”

“I have taught him well,” Ed murmured, nodding sagely from his place on the floor. He had somehow collected a bottle of dish soap and was holding it gingerly to his chest. Eddy took a moment to stare at him with a matronly look of concern.

“Okay, okay. I get it. It’s private, whatever it is. Just - don’t be afraid to tell us anything, okay? Well, Lumpy’s a special case,” he backpedaled upon realizing the warmth he was showing. “If the government really is building an army of Sockheads, it might just overload his casserole of a brain for good.”

The brilliant boy smiled a little, his attention shifting to the horizontal figure scooting in circles and chewing on the collar of his jacket. “I suppose that’s a relevant point.”

“If you really are struttin’ around in lipstick and stilettos, though, ya better tell us soon. I gotta get some pictures of that.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Eddy. After all, what’s life without the threat of blackmail weighing heavy on your shoulders?”

The shorter boy grinned, pointing at his genius with both hands. “Exactly.”

-x-

Double Dee had prepared for his afternoon with Kevin by making a plateful of tiny tofu burgers and buying the fancy brand of tea at the store - Jasmine tea, in fact, which was so decadent and wonderful that he felt almost scandalous pulling it out of the cupboard. Its light, delicious smell had already drifted into the living room when Kevin knocked an unnamed beat onto his door.

“Greetings.” Edd smiled brightly, his heart fluttering more with happiness than fright.

“Hey, man.” The redhead blinked, mildly surprised at the calmness in the younger man’s tone. A flicker of a smile crossed his face, and as the nerd turned back to face the room, Kevin rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously.

“I prepared refreshments - that wasn’t too presumptuous of me, I’m sure.”

“Ah- nah, dude. Not at all. Hey, uh, Double Dee.”

Now standing primly in front of the snack-adorned coffee table, the boy blinked his wide, childlike eyes.

“Don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but Eddy was…” Frustrated, his brows pulled together, his head dropping as if to hide a blush. “I dunno, man. I’m probably just seein’ things, but he looked like he was staring at me today. I told him to mind his own business and eat his vegetables, since he’s a shrimp and all, but - can we-”

The completely open look on the intelligent boy’s face made it almost impossible to finish his sentence. He swore on a near-poetic scale in his head.

“Let’s do this in your room so the little asshole doesn’t look in the window and flip shit on us.”

“Oh.” If there was any discomfort in Double Dee’s voice, Kevin couldn’t hear it over the whoosh of blood through his ears. “Very well, then. Would you mind bringing my books?”

The genius’s room was so clean it was disturbing. Tiny dots moved about in a glass case that Kevin assumed was an ant colony, and where he had posters of gorgeous women, Double Dee had put up posters on the far less titillating side of anatomy. It was pretty funny, honestly.

Stranger yet were the little yellow things everywhere. It took Kevin squinting at one with the intensity of a lightning strike to realize that it actually said “SOCKS” and that he wasn’t just losing it. The drawer beneath had one, too - “PANTS” - and, as a matter of fact, the glass tank across the room was slapped with one reading “ANTS.” Some of them were sillier than others, and it made it seem like Double Dee was poking fun at his own obsessive-compulsiveness in a bizarre way.

“Well then, shall we resume our reading?”

Kevin looked at the books in his hands. One was a copy of the same book he’d smacked out of Double Dee’s hands a couple weeks ago. One was the thick book full of short stories he’d begun to earn a grudging respect for.

“What’s this one?” He slid the top two books onto his other arm, holding up the bottom one.

“That’s an anthology of poetry. The thirteenth edition, to be exact.” Met with the redhead’s trademark unreadable look, Eddward asked, “Would you rather focus on poems today?”

“It can’t be any worse than the Cask of Mike’s Hard Lemonade or whatever.”

Sighing, the smaller male pulled his computer chair over so they’d each have a place to sit. “Fair enough, I suppose. Would you like a tofu burger?”

-x-

               

To Kevin’s disbelief, mini tofu burgers were delicious. He accumulated a small pile of toothpicks with little pieces of colorful paper on the top ends as the sun’s rays turned pink and climbed the walls. Double Dee picked out a wide variety of poems, some about love and joy, others about death. The scholar’s face lit up every time he cleared his throat and began to read lines, his voice rising and falling with emotion as his eyes darted across the pages. He read Kevin the famous Shakespeare sonnet (“Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”) The redhead had heard that one before.

“The last six lines are fascinating.” Eddward scooted the book a little more toward the athlete, and Kevin, head rested in his palm, looked up to watch the genius read them. “But thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, when in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; so long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

“At least it rhymes,” Kevin muttered.

“ _Please_ , Kevin.” Double Dee turned to meet his gaze, expression sincere and eyes bright and earnest. “What do you think he’s saying?”

“He’s saying that the chick he’s writing to isn’t going to die.” He shrugged as he said it. Easy enough.

“And why would the speaker be telling her this when the rest of the poem is more or less realistic?”

“What’re the last couple lines again?” He tugged the book closer to him, the scholar’s stare on him as he skimmed. “As long as men can breathe and eyes can see, so long lives this…”

“’This’ being the poem, one would imagine.” Kevin looked up at Double Dee, his face twisting. The smaller boy blinked at him. “Yes…?”

“What a stuck-up little shit!” As the redhead barked out a laugh, his tutor stared at him in confusion. “He knew he was so good that his stupid poem would be around forever, and he _told_ her that.”

“My, my.” Edd chuckled, hiding his grin behind his hand. “Not quite the reaction I had, but you do have a point…”

The moment following was one unlike any of those before: pleasant and comfortable. Double Dee looked at Kevin with bright, amused eyes, and Kevin looked back, his grin feral.

When the sweater-clad male spoke, the athlete found himself listening without having to feign interest. “The thing that very few members of our generation realize is that literature isn’t some stuffy nonsense. It’s all about very real subjects. For Shakespeare, it was love or advice.”

"Or his ego,” Kevin supplied. Double Dee looked pleased just to have him participating.

“There are a few lovely ones we’ve covered in class on war as well. They’re quite interesting… shall we analyze a few of those, perhaps?”

He looked up to find Kevin shaking his head, looking at something over his shoulder.

"Um, Kevin?"

"I just can't get over your room, man." His eyes were resting on the windowsill - not the windowsill itself, Edd realized, but a small yellow rectangle pressed into the grain of the wood. Kevin's eyes then flicked to the pencil holder next to his elbow labeled "PENCILS." Then to the ceiling, conveniently adorned with a label reading "CEILING."

"I apologize if it's any distraction," the scholar found himself saying, not particularly sorry.

“What the hell are they all for?”

“I enjoy having everything labeled,” Eddward answered simply. “It’s calming.”

Kevin turned his gaze to his tutor. “Where’s your label maker?”

“In the bottom drawer in front of you. Wait, Kevin, I implore you, everything has been organized meticulously-”

Ignoring the frantic genius entirely, Kevin squeezed one eye shut, punching the lever that printed letters onto the old-fashioned labeling tape. He ripped off the yellow strip (Edd wanted to tell him that there was a button you pushed to snip the label, but it was too late) and pushed it to Double Dee’s shoulder. Startled, he stared at it. The word “DORK” wasn’t hard to decipher.

“Why, thank you, Kevin. How thoughtful.”

“No problem.” The redhead chuckled. “Hey-”

“It’s _my_ label-maker.” Kevin watched as the black-capped boy turned the wheel to each desired letter, far more swiftly than he had. Pulling the label off, Double Dee leaned forward. Freezing when he hit the back of his chair, the athlete’s eyes went wide. Small hands pressed gingerly against the redhead’s hat, smoothing the label carefully before pulling back. Kevin glared at him suspiciously - he only smiled behind his hands - and when he pulled his snapback off to look at it, it was labelled “IMBECILE.”

“Wow. Thanks a lot, dweeb.”

“I told you I like to have everything labeled.” The look in his eyes was almost playful. “If you’re willing to stick with this, you might be able to trade that for a slightly more complimentary one.”

Kevin crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Slightly?”

“I am nothing if not honest,” came Eddward’s harmless reply. The redhead rolled his eyes and rested his arms on the table, setting his chin on them and sighing. Double Dee chuckled softly and began leafing through the book’s pages.

Sonnets, haikus … the diamonds and long columns of print all had names, he knew. Some of them just rambled on and on in long, uneven lines, looking quite a bit like the ants marching through the little glass tank across the room. A bunch of white spaces caught the athlete’s eye. “Hey. What was that one?”

Flipping back to it, Eddward replied, “I’m not sure. It isn’t one we discussed in class.”

“The Torso.” Kevin read the title aloud, wondering if it was about someone mangled. After Shakespeare, it would be a welcome change of pace. Squaring the book before his small figure, Double Dee began to read.

“Most beautiful! The red-flowering eucalyptus

                    the madrone, the yew

                    Is he...

 

       _So thou wouldst smile, and take me in thine arms_

_the sight of London to my exiled eyes_

_Is as Elysium to a new-come soul_

 

              If he be Truth

              I would dwell in the illusion of him

 

  His hands unlocking from chambers of my male body

 

            such an idea in man's image

 

       rising tides that sweep me towards him

 

              ...homosexual?”

 

                    Without looking up, the jock could tell that the genius’s face was beet-red. His slender fingers trembled on the desk, the sudden heat radiating off of him enough for Kevin to feel.

 

                    Unless that was the heat rising to Kevin’s own face, of course.

 

                    Eddward swallowed thickly. He pulled in a shaky breath and continued, his voice cracking.

 

                “And at the treasure of his mouth

 

              pour forth my soul

 

                 his love commingling

 

  I thought a Being more than vast, His body leading

            into Paradise, his eyes

              quickening a fir in me, a trembling

 

            hieroglyph: At the root of the neck

 

       _the clavicle_ , for the neck is the stem of the great artery

         upward into his head that is beautiful

 

                 At the rise of the pectoral muscles

 

       _the nipples_ , for the breasts are like sleeping fountains

         of feeling in man, waiting above the heat of his heart,

         shielding the rise and fall of his breath, to be

         awakened

 

                 At the axis of his midriff

 

       _the navel_ , for in the pit of his stomach the chord from

         which first he was fed has its temple

 

                 At the root of the groin

 

       _the pubic hair_ , for the torso is the stem in which the man

         flowers forth and leads to the stamen of flesh in which

         his seed rises

 

  a wave of need and desire over taking me

 

              cried out my name

 

       (This was long ago. It was another life)

 

                        and said,

 

            What do you want of me?

 

  I do not know, I said. I have fallen in love. He

     has brought me into heights and depths my heart

             would fear without him. His look

 

       pierces my side. fire eyes.

 

     I have been waiting for you, he said:

                 I know what you desire

 

            you do not yet know but through me.

 

     And I am with you everywhere. In your falling

 

     I have fallen from a high place. I have raised myself

 

            from darkness in your rising

 

                      wherever you are

 

       my hand in your hand seeking the locks, the keys

 

     I am there. Gathering me, you gather

 

            your Self.

 

       For my Other is not a woman but a man

 

_the King upon whose bosom let me lie.”_

 

The ensuing silence went on for a good thirty seconds. Double Dee had gone from red to a peculiar shade of purple.

When Kevin didn’t think he could keep his heart from smashing a hole through his chest if he kept quiet for a moment longer, he let out a hoarse laugh. “God damn. That’s a heck of a poem.”

“Indeed,” squeaked Edd. He sounded as if he was about to faint.

“It seems like your kinda poem,” the jock mumbled. Immediately he wanted to punch himself.

“What?!” Double Dee turned toward him, eyes as wide as saucers.

“No! No, I mean - the body parts and stuff! It’s like, medical.” Kevin had his hands up and was waving them, and Eddward continued to gawk at him, blushing and horrified. “It’s like he’s being technical about it.”

“Nipples, Kevin? _Nipples?_ ”

“You know what I mean!” The redhead’s hands were still up as if to shield himself from the scholar. He _knew_ his fucking face was red now. “It’s not like it’s that big of a deal anyway.”

Kevin turned back to the desk, resting his head on his hand, hiding his expression with his long fingers. When Double Dee’s stare burned into the side of his head, he glared at him defensively. “What’s it matter who a guy likes anyway? It’s nobody’s business but your own.”

“F-forgive me for my skepticism.”

The boy in the sweater had his hands on his knees and was looking down at them. “What do you mean by that?”

“You honestly wouldn’t bully someone for being - homosexual?”

“No, I wouldn’t. How long has it been since you’ve seen me pick on somebody?”

Having peeked up at him, Double Dee blinked his long eyelashes and looked back down. “That’s a valid point.”

“Double Dee, I don’t have a problem with somebody unless they give me a reason to. And yes, I’m talkin’ about your loudmouthed little friend.”

The smaller boy didn’t say anything. Kevin reached across the gap between them, and Eddward recoiled like he’d been shocked when the redhead lightly touched his shoulder.

“You okay?”

“I-” He gulped audibly. “Yes. Yes, I’m all right. Um … should we look at a few more?”

“Sure. Just - maybe some not-romantic ones, yeah?”

Nodding, Double Dee flipped a few pages. “From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State, And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze. Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life, I work to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”

“Uh, wow. What’s that about?”

And as quickly as the mood had become one of horrified embarrassment, it began to shift to one of lighthearted conversation. Double Dee explained that ball turrets were attached to the bottoms of aircraft in World War II and that the gunners were suspended, attempting to shoot enemies before the enemies could shoot them. Kevin thought that was “pretty rad,” and while the scholar’s face still reddened a bit from time to time, the humiliating moment seemed to have pushed him outside of his comfort zone enough to relax and smile freely. They poured over a few more poems about the horrors of war, the redhead watching his tutor more openly. A weight seemed to have lifted from his shoulders. His words were filled with less politeness and more direct analysis of the print on the pages, and his legs, which had been tensely glued together at the knees, actually relaxed until his feet touched the floor.

The sun was nearly setting when the sweater-clad boy stuck a planet-covered bookmark between the pages and closed the book. “I don’t want to overload you with information, so we can stop here for now.”

“Oh,” said Kevin, as if coming out of a daze.

He walked behind the little genius as he proceeded down the perfectly-clean hall, content to occupy himself with his thoughts. Double Dee walked so carefully, so deliberately. It was … well.

Funny in kind of a charming way.

“Um, thank you again for coming over. I enjoy having someone to discuss literature with. Eddy and Ed aren’t interested in the slightest.”  He stopped before the front door, his socks whispering softly on the carpet, and turned to face his guest. “If you like, I can send a plate of my mini tofu burgers home with-”

The breath left his lungs when he hit the wall, Kevin’s broad hands on his shoulders.

When he opened his eyes, the redhead was inches away, his green eyes half-lidded and unreadable. He smelled of musk and shampoo and something horridly appealing. The terror in Double Dee’s gut twisted into something sweeter at the realization. He swallowed hard.

When he spoke, the athlete’s voice was thick and low. “I just can’t figure you out.”

The genius’s lips parted, but he had no strength to force words through. Kevin’s stare flickered down to his mouth and stayed there for what felt like an eternity.

The jock pulled away suddenly, leaving a vacuum where he had stood. Eddward stared straight ahead as the athlete closed the door behind himself. His vision darkened and he made a conscious effort to breathe.

It was approximately four more seconds until his knees gave out.


	4. References to Television

It was the most terrifying Thursday of Eddward’s life.

The tidy scholar fluctuated between giddy heart attacks and self-loathing heart attacks, breaking the lead of two perfectly-sharpened number 2 pencils in a single class and catching himself imagining smoldering green eyes as opposed to earning his participation points. Every time he heard a deep laugh in the halls, he would jump violently. When possible, he hid behind Ed, who swept him off his feet at three separate instances, telling him to be proud of his metamorphosis no matter what his peers thought. He prayed sincerely that Ed’s words happened to be coincidental instead of eerily perceptive.

 His nerves were so frayed that, on Friday, he wore the same dress sweater as the day before. He didn’t notice until he was back at home, scrutinizing his every flaw in the mirror.

Double Dee spent the weekend at Eddy’s house, watching two of Ed’s favorite mind-numbing movies and two of Eddy’s crass comedies. His selections were documentaries - one on black holes and the other on deep sea life - and Ed snored softly as Eddy squinted and frowned at the screen until he got a headache. Double Dee hugged him for trying. His short friend’s response was to flail him off and exclaim, “What are ya?!” The genius simply smiled.

On Sunday they immersed themselves in videogames that allowed all three of them to work together in different roles. Ed managed to get them killed nearly half a dozen times, by aiming at Eddy’s character, sending up flares and alerting enemies to their location, and, at one point, spontaneously combusting. (Eddy ranted for half an hour as he looked through the instruction booklet, saying that that wasn’t even physically possible. Ed only smiled cryptically and took a bow.)

It was just before lunch on Monday when it happened.

Ed was already halfway through his container of macaroni and cheese (he was somehow eating the plastic as well, despite Double Dee’s chiding,) while Eddy struggled to body-check his locker door into staying shut.

“’Sup, losers?”

Ice shot up Eddward’s spine. He froze in place as his companions turned to face the looming redhead.

“What the hell do you want?” Eddy was too preoccupied with his locker to come up with a better insult.

“Need some help there? You could have your own TLC show, y’know. Little Eddy, Big World.”

“Shut up, you overgrown ape. We got better things to do than listen to your yammering.”

“Didn’t know he knew words that big.” A hand rested on Eddward’s shoulder and all the ice in his veins turned to fire. “Did you teach him that, Double Dee?”

“Eddy was familiar with the concept of yammering long before I met him,” Double Dee whispered.

Kevin howled with laughter, letting go of Edd’s shoulder. Eddy stared in shock for a moment before yelling at the genius for turning on him, but the adrenaline screaming through his body didn’t allow for any outside input to be received. Eddy was shaking a fist, glaring past Double Dee, and he knew the jock was backing up from where his livid friend was looking.

“See ya later, dorks,” Kevin called after them, his tone strangely jovial. Double Dee found the courage to turn around to see him stalking off, holding up one hand in a wave. The blush from his scalp to his shoulder blades was making his long-sleeved shirt horribly uncomfortable.

“…still can’t believe you picked on me in front of him,” Eddy was muttering as Double Dee came back to earth.

“Double Dee is as wrecked as a sack of potatoes,” Ed observed quietly.

On Tuesday, he saw the athlete talking to a group of his teammates and realized that the word “IMBECILE” was still stuck to his cap.

-x-

The genius spent no less than seven hours attempting to prepare a lesson plan. Every neatly-printed list of genres, authors, and themes became a page of words that were all crossed out. The small section at the back of the poetry book on how to structure one’s reading schedule seemed to be geared toward group learning as opposed to single-person tutoring scenarios. And for the first time ever, attempting to skim the Shakespearean plays he so loved only numbed his mind and caused anxiety to buzz dully in his stomach. He didn’t know what Kevin would want to read about.

He didn’t know anything about Kevin at all.

The sky was low and heavy on Wednesday, mirroring the petite teen’s daunting whirlwind of emotions. He became miserably aware of how obvious his panic was when Nazz tapped him on the shoulder in biology, giving him an oddly humorless look. “You okay, Double Dee? You’re looking pretty pale.”

“I assure you, I’m fine, Nazz.” He managed a grin, but her concern only seemed to soften a little.

“Okay, if you’re sure, dude.” The blonde then patted his shoulder softly before returning her attention to doodling along the margins of her textbook.

He couldn’t even muster the strength to smooth out the fabric of his shirt.

Upon arriving at home, Edd scrubbed his face and hands until his skin burned and found a large sweatshirt that he hoped he’d be able to simply crawl inside of until the day had passed. When his hypothesis was proven that this, indeed, was impossible, he found himself stepping onto the porch, sitting down on a folded towel saved for scrubbing floors with. He folded his hands in his lap and stared out at the cul-de-sac, shaking violently.

Eons later and almost instantly, the wiry redhead’s shadow fell over him. Double Dee swallowed thickly and looked up.

“Hey,” said Kevin softly.

“H-hello,” Double Dee croaked. The redhead’s hands were shoved in his pockets and his shoulders were drawn tight. Double Dee could smell the denim of his jeans. Putting his hands on his knees to keep them from shaking, he stood. Immediately his fingers were trying to crawl up into his oversized sleeves. “Shall we?”

The weight of the boy’s presence behind him was a crushing pressure as he climbed the stairs, and when he opened the door and his socks met the carpet of his room, his pulse thumped painfully in his throat. Kevin took the seat beside his, throwing an arm over the back of the chair and remaining silent. Eddward made a concerted effort not to notice how his shirt bunched around his biceps and rode up to reveal the slightest glimpse of toned stomach.

He felt like he was going to be ill.

“Would you be averse to continuing our poetry lesson?” The book audibly shuddered against the table for a brief moment as he opened it.

“Whatever you want.”

“I- ah, v-very well, then. I marked some works by Emily Dickinson I think you will find interesting.”

“Yeah,” Kevin rasped. “Okay.”

“Because her poems were published after her death, they were thrown completely … um…” Gulping, the dark-haired boy allowed himself to glance at the jock draped over his desk chair. “…the poems were taken out of chronological order and weren’t organized from first to last until recently. I tried to mark them to match the approximate order they’re now accepted in - oh dear…”

“You look like you’re gonna pass out. Do you need a drink or something?”

Rising gracefully out of his seat, the redhead loomed over the genius pensively. “Um, a glass of ice water, please.” The older boy closed the door carefully behind him as he slipped out and Double Dee turned his attention to the poster on the wall next to his window of Albert Einstein. _What would you do in a situation like this?_ he pleaded silently.

Albert gazed stoically over his head as if far too ashamed by his lack of social skills to even acknowledge him.

Within moments, Kevin slipped back in beside him and held out a glass. Five ice cubes clanked together in it. “Here, man.” Then, when Edd hesitated, “Take it.”

The smaller male cupped the sweating glass in both hands, tipping his head back and taking childlike sips. The redhead’s stare was unwavering as he drank. When Double Dee moved to set it down, Kevin took the cup and set it on a blank notecard. Instead of withdrawing, he stayed where he was. Double Dee watched breathlessly as long fingers crept near his clasped hands.

“Look. Just pick a poem and we’ll look at it, okay? Here.” He turned the book to look at it, then turned it back toward the shivering genius. “We’ll start with this one. Can you read it for me?”

“I…” Double Dee looked up at him, his pulse thudding visibly in his throat. “All right.”

“Go ahead,” said Kevin breathlessly. He was close enough for Eddward to smell his cologne.

Blue eyes lingered on green for a moment before flicking down to the pages.

“I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

And Mourners to and fro

Kept treading--treading--till it seemed

That Sense was breaking through--

 

And when they all were seated,

A Service, like a Drum--

Kept beating--beating--till I thought

My Mind was going numb--

 

And then I heard them lift a Box

And creak across my Soul

With those same Boots of Lead, again,

Then Space--began to toll,

 

As all the Heavens were a Bell,

And Being, but an Ear,

And I, and Silence, some strange Race

Wrecked, solitary, here--

 

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,

And I dropped down, and down--

And hit a World, at every plunge,

And Finished knowing--then--”

“It’s pretty,” Kevin murmured after a minute. Edd looked at the hand resting before him and wondered fleetingly if Kevin chewed his fingernails. “What’s the story behind it?”

“Dickinson was the subject of much controversy when this was first released since it suggested that consciousness simply fizzles out after death. At the time, Christianity was considered to be the correct belief.”

“So she was an atheist?”

“Well, not necessarily. She may have suffered from depression after her mother died. While she entertained visitors, she never left her house. Some of her poems are about suffering a psychotic break, though whether or not she herself is the speaker is up for interpretation. Her body of works depicts her as both enraptured with the beauty of nature and discouraged with the human race.”

“So kinda like you?” The redhead’s crooked grin was heartbreakingly attractive.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Double Dee’s voice was thin, but he allowed himself a peek at the athlete and felt a smile spreading across his face when he realized that “IMBECILE” was still stuck firmly to the strap of Kevin’s hat.

“So tell me what it means already, dork.”

“Rudeness will get you nowhere, sir. I would prefer _your_ ideas before I’ll be willing to share my own.”

When only silence greeted him, he looked up to find the older boy smirking at him. Heat rose to his face immediately and he sputtered, head whipping back down to the book in front of him. Kevin laughed.

-x-

“Hey, dork.”

"Yes?”

The genius was standing up, smoothing out the wrinkles in his baggy shirt. It was almost eight, and his parents were to be home at nine-thirty, or so the sticky note on the refrigerator said. Kevin gazed at him with those dark green eyes, not making a move to get up yet. “Are you busy Friday?”

“Um, not particularly.”

“Nothing planned with the weirdoes?”

“No.” He shook his head a little. “Not yet.”

“Can I come over, then?”

The room seemed to shift beneath his feet. Eddward gripped the back of his chair, clearing his throat. “T-to study?”

“I got finals next week. We have ‘em earlier than you lowly sophomores.”

“Yes, of course!” Edd stuttered. “Goodness, how could I forget?”

“You don’t mind?”

He squeezed the wood of the chair until his knuckles were white.

“Not at all.”

The redhead rose above him and pushed his hat down over his thick hair. Double Dee uttered a silent _good Lord_ and cursed his ability to name every muscle that rippled beneath his short-sleeved shirt. Kevin opened his mouth to say something, but hesitated, and the frantic urgency to fill the air with words caused Eddward to make a high-pitched squeak. “Um - uh-”

Kevin blinked at him, looking genuinely nervous, and the ability to form sentences died inside him.

 “I, uh,” the redhead cleared his throat, rubbing the side of his neck. “I better - yeah.”

“Yes!” Eddward chirped.

Kevin lingered a moment longer before turning toward the door. Double Dee followed him, scrubbing his clammy hands on his jeans. The older boy’s feet reached the door and he hesitated, his eyes on the light spilling through the crack from the hallway.

After a second, Double Dee made a sound of embarrassment and shuffled past him to open the door, frightened that Kevin was waiting for him to do so and that he had just made himself look like an utterly incompetent host. The redhead tensed suddenly, half-turning to face the petite genius, and the uncertainty in his eyes was unlike anything Double Dee had seen before.

His hand had just reached the doorknob when he was shoved against the wall, making the jar on the shelf by his head and the planets suspended from the ceiling rattle.

Kevin’s pupils were immense and the silence was suffocating.

“K-Kevin, I - I don’t think thisismaybeI _nononoMMPH_ -”

Kevin’s hands and mouth silenced his protests immediately.

Before he knew what was happening, Eddward was fisting his hands in the cotton of the jock’s shirt and greedily accepting the tongue that was pushing between his lips. Strong hands slid down his sides and gripped at his waist and he moaned helplessly against perfect teeth. Double Dee whined in protest when the redhead tore his lips away, only to cry out when Kevin bit his neck, sucking hard at the mark he left. “Don’t - _ahhh_ \- h-how will I hide-”

"Use makeup, dork,” breathed the athlete before once again pressing his lips and tongue to the shuddering boy’s skin, this time claiming the sensitive spot behind the genius’s ear.

"Oh dear, Kevin, p-please-” The hands gripping his waist slid lower, and the petite boy arched off of the wall when the redhead’s lips roamed across his collarbone. His eyes fluttered open, unseeing, and he gasped fruitlessly for air. The smell of the athlete’s skin and the heat of his mouth were completely, utterly incapacitating. He squeezed the smaller male’s hips, and Double Dee cried out desperately before biting his bottom lip to shut himself up. Kevin chuckled against his skin, a deep, predatory sound. It vibrated all the way down Eddward’s stomach.

Suddenly, the powerful hands left his sides and the redhead stepped back. Double Dee blinked, dazed, and darkness clouded his vision at the terrifying look in the bigger male’s eyes.

“Be seeing you,” he murmured. He stepped out of the room and shut the door behind him.

“Oh _dear,_ ” Double Dee murmured breathlessly, and slid down the wall in a dead faint.


	5. Contemplation

The weather was solemnly hopeful, glowing a milky yellow blotted with grayish clouds. The faculty was having a meeting day and school was cancelled. “Why not just have no school on Friday too? You know none of us are gonna be paying attention,” Eddy had asked his homeroom teacher the day before. His teacher told him that, if he’d like, he could stay afterward and spend a detention helping the principal rearrange the calendar. Eddy had crossed his arms and sunk back into his seat, muttering under his breath.

Kevin sat on one of the low balance-beams, staring at the sunlight glinting off the spokes of his bike wheels. Nazz was across from him, kicking herself in half-circles on the merry-go-round. The breeze ruffled her hair, ever in its carefree bob. “Anyway, my aunt was super-pissed. I guess she actually threatened to kick my cousin out.”

“Man,” Kevin mumbled, staring at his bike, “that sucks.”

"Dude, if there’s something on your mind, just say it.”

“Yeah.” The redhead looked up. “Huh?”

The blonde gave a small smile, her head cocked to the side. “You know I can read you like a book. What’s up?”

“Nothing. School stuff. Just worried about my grades, y’know?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Since I guess you didn’t hear me, I’ll tell you again. I can read you like a book.” The quarterback rolled his eyes and looked away, and she pressed him. “Why are you lying to me?”

“I’m not _lying_ , Nazz. I’m just kind of out of it lately.”

“You are beating the bush like Mama disciplining the youngsters, Kevin,” Rolf chimed in. He was on one of the rusty swings that had stood on the playground since they were small.

“Stay out of it, man. Nothin’s going on.”

Rolf exchanged a glance with the boy beside him, a teal-haired kid who moved to Peach Creek in high school. Nat shrugged and turned his focus back to swinging enthusiastically.

“I haven’t seen you get that look since ninth grade,” Nazz continued, voice hushed as Rolf and Nat resumed their chatter. “Wait … are you into someone?”

“ _No_ , Nazz.”

“You look _possessed_ , dude.”

Defeated, the redhead turned back to his companion. She had been eerily perceptive since they’d become close years before. It would seem strange to anyone who didn’t know them - he had finally charmed her, courted her, and gotten her in his bed. And as they lay there, arms around one another and lips meshing, the realization had hit them both.

They were simply not right for each other.

In the wake of the strange absence of physical chemistry, they had parted ways for a few weeks, but their closeness was too natural, too much a facet of everyday life, and they were soon spending time together just as they had before dating. Nazz was a sister he didn’t have; a pair of eyes that saw everything, whether Kevin yet saw it himself.

And sometimes it was really fucking annoying.

“You’re turning red, dude.”

“No, _Nazz_ , I’m not.”

“In Rolf’s homeland, a grueling obstacle course is the solution for the overwhelming testosterone.”

“I’m not doing an obstacle course, man.”

“It would be good for the tension in your thighs, broad-jaw Kevin.”

“You’re gettin’ weird, Rolf.”

Nat blinked, silently looking from the jock to the foreigner. Nazz shot Rolf an unamused look.

“Nothing’s going on, Nazz. I’m just wrapped up in studying.”

“Yeah,” the blonde replied as Kevin’s gaze returned to his bike. “Right.”

-x-

“You’re a Nigerian!”

“…the placement of the outer ring here should effectively emphasize the … what?”

“You’re a Nigerian, aren’tcha?”

Double Dee stared at Eddy, unable to keep the bored look off his face. “I’m just going to wait and hope you start explaining why you said that.”

The boy in the tank top and the ridiculous jacket covered in dollar signs cocked an eyebrow. “Those are the ones that do church on Wednesdays, right? And believe in aliens?”

“Those are Christians and Scientologists, respectively.”

“Right. So which one are ya?”

“While I am intrigued by recent metaphysical discoveries that reinforce the theory of intelligent design, I have yet to commit to a specific religion, Eddy.”

“Oh.” The shortest of the Eds looked back down at his scribble-covered paper. “Then what’re you doing on Wednesdays?”

“I simply needed to dedicate an afternoon to studying in order to give myself more structure.” The black-capped boy stared at the colored pencils lined up neatly to his right, willing his face to stay cool in the wake of his shameless lie. His fingertips danced over the dollop of his mother’s concealer on his neck and he wondered idly how badly it was clogging his pores.

“Some support beams will help you with that, Double Dee,” Ed chimed in. He was pacing to and fro, his hands folded behind his back and a pencil tucked behind his ear. While he had yet to contribute any ideas, the look of severe concentration on his face made Eddward smile silently.

“Yeah, right. Like he doesn’t have enough structure already.” Eddy frowned at the discarded blueprints scattered across the table. “How ‘bout instead of structuring your boring life, you structure us up some irresistibly eye-catching designs for our club brochures?”

“It would help if you knew what kind of club you were establishing, Eddy,” the sock-headed boy suggested.

“ _Ed’s Excellence in Education_ ,” Eddy bellowed on cue, slinging an arm around Double Dee and waving the other hand across the air as if to call the vision to life before their eyes. For a minimal membership fee, our fellow students will learn study skills that will help through the rest of their lives!”

“And haunt them after death, no doubt,” Eddward muttered. “And just how do you plan to get the principal to approve your club’s founding when your GPA is a C average at best?”

“That’s where _you_ come in.” Eddy grinned, poking his best friend in the chest. Double Dee reached to smooth out his shirt immediately. “You’re gonna be the official president, while _I_ operate behind the scenes. I’m the shogun and you’re the emperor.”

The scholar threw his hands up in frustration. “How can you know that but think that _Nigeria is a religion?!_ ”

“Oatmeal and gravy is no way to live, Double Dee.”

Eddy and Eddward turned to their friend. “You’re gonna pull something, Ed,” the shorter of the pair finally uttered. Blinking thoughtfully, the tallest of the three paced over and sat down on the floor, peering over the edge of the table and poking at the protractor sitting next to Eddy’s stack of erasers. Double Dee patted him on the head affectionately.

“If you’re so upset about my usage of spare time, we can set a day aside to spend time together. Saturdays, perhaps.”

“Saturday fun time!” Ed crowed in agreement. Double Dee petted his short hair again, chuckling softly.

“Uh, Saturday ain’t gonna work for me.”

The genius and the absentminded boy peered at Eddy, surprised. “Saturday fun time,” Ed protested.

“I got stuff to do on Saturday.” The short male turned to his doodles, adding a few squiggles and attempting to make a face of concentration. Ed peeked at Double Dee before returning his stare back to Eddy.

“Stuff, Eddy?” The genius’s tone was jovial. “ _You?_ ”

“Yeah. I got chores and cleaning and stuff.” His brows drew together, his mouth a small line as he made overlapping loops.

“Well, I support your sudden decision to fulfill your familial duties. Just as I require time for myself, you need yours.”

Eddy glanced at him without turning his head, and Eddward’s stomach knotted at the distinct feeling that his friend had heard through his lie. He realized he was still scratching Ed’s head when the large boy’s foot began tapping on the floor.

“Yeah, whatever. Hey Lumpy, can ya get us some more snacks? I think there’s a bag of Cheetos on the microwave.”

“I’ll get it,” said the petite one before Ed could get up. He hopped off of his stool, anxious for a moment to calm his frayed nerves. Taking a detour to the bathroom first to wash his hands, Eddward scrubbed especially thoroughly under the nails of the hand he’d been petting Ed with.

His reflection looked tired, but there was a glimmer of anticipation in his eyes.

Swallowing thickly, Double Dee dried his hands and headed for the kitchen.


	6. Wherein Words Are Repeated For Emphasis

On Friday the school was nearly humming on its foundation with pent-up energy. The coach made sure that the televised morning announcements included that football practice would be postponed for at least two more weeks due to the monsoon-like weather forecast, and with many of the school’s athletes antsy from the conclusion of the baseball season just over a month before, the air was suddenly crisp with the electricity of barely-contained frustration. The newest issue of the school newspaper was out, of course, and the main article was mentioned by name: Cnidarians, Congressmen, and Other Invertebrates by Eddward Vincent. Marie Kanker was the only student intelligent enough to get the joke, and she giggled at the witty title. May leaned over to whisper far too loudly, “What’cha laughin’ at, Marie?”

“You’re too stupid to understand,” the blue-haired sophomore hissed back, flicking a wad of paper at the blonde’s face.

“Hey, Ed.” Eddy hurried up to his towering, yellowish friend after the bell rang, releasing the herd of adolescents into the halls. “Are you busy tonight?”

“Yep,” Ed replied, a pout on his face as he prodded at the pile of clothing on the top shelf of his locker. “I’m a charlatan.”

“A what now?” Someone made a whooshing sound and swished their hand through the air over the short boy’s head. He peered behind him, frowning suspiciously and rubbing his head.

Ed prodded the wad of fabric a few more times, smiling when a chewed-up pencil toppled out and hit the floor. “A charlatan, silly little Eddy. Sarah’s going on a date, and Mom told me I get to go along.”

“A … a chaperone,” the greedy kid realized, slapping a hand over his eyes. “It’s like I need a translator.”

“Yep,” Ed affirmed, slamming his locker door. “Oh, there’s Double Dee!”

The slight-framed Edd was standing at his locker a ways down toward the restrooms, plucking slim folders out of the rainbow of stationary in his orderly locker. He was in a black V-neck shirt with the only hooded jacket he owned over it - an auburn zip-up with “Peach Creek Honors Student” on the back in white, glossy lettering. Ed whisked him off his feet, effectively turning him into what looked like a squished pumpkin.

“Good heavens, Ed!” The scholar wormed an arm out of his hulking friend’s embrace to hang onto his hat. “Aren’t you full of pep this morning.”

“Pep, yep yep,” Ed agreed, setting Double Dee on his feet.

“Ed’s gotta babysit his plague of a sister tonight,” Eddy muttered, his binder tucked under his arm, paper corners fluttering from its every opening when he moved.

“That’s quite all right, Ed. It’s important to make sure that courting is conducted in a…” he gulped, though he hoped not audibly. “…chivalrous and respectful manner.”

Eddy gave him a funny look, and his hickey throbbed angrily under his jacket.

"Now, if you’ll excuse me, we’re observing planarians today under a microscope. If I’m lucky, Mrs. Sanders might just let me take a few home!”

“Don’t get a rash, Double Dee,” was Eddy’s response.

“Pep pep, yep yep,” Ed added. He waved cheerfully as their sockheaded friend made his way toward the science wing.

-x-

The air was crisp and tiny droplets of water whipped through it, misting Double Dee’s face and hands as he walked home. The breeze on his back spurred him onward, overriding the fear that threatened to explode out of the back of his mind if he dared to acknowledge it. He zipped his jacket up all the way to the collar while waiting for a minivan to clear the crosswalk and realized that his hands were shaking. Edd stomped the sick feeling out before it could take hold in the pit of his stomach. Gripping the strap of his messenger bag tightly, he looked both ways twice and continued home.

When his feet met the porch, he realized that a scuffed-up pair of tennis shoes was already there. Attached to them, as his suddenly jello-filled legs had realized, was Kevin.

"Gracious,” Eddward heard himself babbling as the blood left his face and elected to reconvene in the pit of his stomach, “I didn’t expect you this early, haha. I, um, I have, there’s a bit of, ngh.” The deafening thudding of his heart drowned out the hiss of the wind and he snapped his mouth shut. Then, suddenly: “How did you get here when school doesn’t let out for another thirty minutes?”

“Stop talking. Let’s get inside before anybody sees us.”

Edd watched as a single delicate hand attempted to unzip the pocket of his bag that his house key was in. When he was barely able to grip the zipper between his thumb and forefinger, he tried adding his other hand, and as he made a strangled sound of frustration, the athlete pulled his hands away and extracted the key himself. A keychain in the shape of a beaker with the words “I LOVE SCIENCE” engraved on it glinted in the light as the redhead shoved it into the lock. The genius found himself being yanked inside by his wrist.

Before he could think, the jock had pulled his bag off and had flung his own backpack to the floor. He fumbled with the door lock without looking at it and attempted to put the house key on the windowsill. Before it had hit the carpet, his hands were on the genius.

“K-Kevin!” Double Dee backed away, eyes widening to the size of baseballs. “Kevin, wait, please, we have to talk!”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” The redhead had gotten a hold of his jacket now and was trying to hold him in place, the heat in the older male’s eyes almost scaring him into submission before another jolt of adrenaline had him scrambling backward once more. He attempted to skitter into the kitchen, but his shoulder caught on the doorframe and Kevin took the opportunity to push him against the wall, fingers leaving his jacket for the warmth of his small frame.

“I vehemently disagree! The consequences of such rash decisions are sure to be- ngh…” Kevin’s lips were on his neck, tongue trailing beneath his earlobe. His stomach was inches away and the heat radiating from it was already hitting the smaller boy’s skin. If he allowed their bodies to brush together, he had severe doubts about the strength of his self-control. “This isn’t the logical way to go about - maturity should certainly require - _don’t touch me there_ , I’m ticklish!”

“Ticklish, huh?” The redhead’s breath on his ear did little for Edd’s case, and when the fingers returned to his stomach, the sound he made certainly wasn’t one of being tickled. He gripped the shoulder seams of the athlete’s shirt, not caring about the damage done to the garment, trying to push him away and somehow managing to drag him closer. Kevin’s mouth caught his and the teeth on his bottom lip managed to make a far more convincing argument than he could with his immense vocabulary. Delicious, delicious friction between the toned body and his own made Eddward whine, and when the athlete ground something very hot and very hard against his stomach, he tore his mouth away hard enough to bang his head on the wall.

“ _Kevin!_ I implore you, desist at once! This display of graceless desire is utterly _nnngh_ inexcusable! We … we need to talk! Your sudden and inexplicable infatuation must-”

" _Inexplicable?_ ” Kevin’s hands were still moving, _moving_ , and the expression on his face terrified Eddward into silence immediately. “Have you _looked_ in a mirror? Jesus. Your face, your voice…” Large hands moved down to squeeze denim-covered flesh and Double Dee yelped. “…this tight little ass … what the fuck is _inexplicable?_ ”

“I … ahhh…”

Sky-blue eyes glazing over, the genius gasped for air. Friction was happening; exquisite, shuddering explosions of electricity that dulled his terror and made all of his senses impossibly sharp. Kevin kissed him again and the slight boy moaned against his tongue as he tried to mimic its movements with his own. The hands on him slid up to his waist, taking his shirt with it, and as the pressure of the wall left his back and the chill of the air conditioning hit his heated skin, it dawned on him that Kevin was carrying him up the stairs and he was doing nothing to stop it. The sticky notes on his door fluttered as it opened, and the sound of it slamming behind them made him jump in the jock’s arms. The redhead grunted at the sudden sensation, his breath hot on the genius’s shoulder as Eddward held onto the larger male for dear life.

When they toppled onto the bed, the fear returned a thousand fold.

“Kevin, please! _Listen to reason!_ ”

“Nope,” the gorgeous boy growled out, shoving Double Dee’s shirt up and biting his stomach. The scholar let out an undignified screech and grabbed Kevin’s shoulder and his face, pushing on them with all his strength as his lower half attempted to spontaneously erupt into flames.

“I’m serious - oh my _Lord_ I - please, this has to stop immediately, your saliva carries five hundred species of microorganisms and now _they’re in my naval_ good _heavens_ Kevin PLEASE! I am strongly opposed to physical intimacy without strong feelings of emotional attachment and the prospect of an exclusive relationship at the very _least!_ ”

Kevin pulled back from where he was nipping at the sensitive skin just above Eddward’s hip, his lips flushed from the contact and his face stained dark. “Yeah,” he rasped. “So what’s the problem?”

Edd’s heart stuttered and his eyes grew huge. “I’m … I…”

He was far too beautiful to say no to.

Not pushing the delicate palm from his face, Kevin leaned forward and met the boy’s lips. The petite one gave a shuddering groan as the athlete’s torso met his own, digging his fingers into thick red hair and knocking his baseball cap to the floor. Kevin worked a hand under his shirt to hold his back, and Double Dee let his head fall to the bed as the athlete ground their hips together, eyes unseeing as they drifted over the model planets suspended from the ceiling. He could feel the blood pooling under his skin as teeth broke capillaries and fingers gripped his jaw possessively. When Kevin reached between them with a shaking hand to unzip their pants, he stifled his fear by gripping broad shoulders and burying his face in the crook of the redhead’s pale neck.

“You gotta trust me.” Kevin was pulling the genius’s jeans down, his rough fingertips returning to the elastic of his briefs. “Do you trust me?”

He could feel the shadow of the hand hovering over his arousal. “With my life,” he whispered.

The feeling of the redhead touching him in a way he barely touched himself was enough to reduce him to a shivering, sobbing mess.

“Hey. Breathe, okay?”

The absence of stroking fingers made him whine in agony. The jock was leaning back on his knees, ripping seams as he fought his clothing off. The glint of dim light off of a tiny tube caught the genius’s eye, and the redhead tossed it onto the bed. A sudden burst of rain pelted onto the roof as the jock pulled the square of foil he’d been looking for out of his back pocket.

“K-Kevin.”

The athlete was struggling with the condom wrapper, hands shaking. “What?”

“I’ll need you to wash your hands before proceeding.”

“ _What-?_ For the love of-”

Double Dee turned his attention to breathing as the redhead climbed off the bed, flinching at the tug of fabric against his arousal and dashing out of the room as fast as he could with his jeans falling down his hips. The black-capped boy turned his panicked gaze to his poster of Einstein, silently begging for guidance.

The inventor only stared gleefully through the shadows. _You’ve done well, son,_ he seemed to be thinking.

“Curse you, Albert,” Eddward whispered into the darkness.

“Okay.” The scholar squeaked as the redhead reentered the room and stumbled to the bed, kicking off his pants and socks in the process. The lines of his toned chest and stomach were wonderfully terrible, and the smaller boy’s vision darkened with terror when his gaze trailed down to the bulge in the athlete’s boxers. The glorious boy leaned over him, all wiry muscle and sincere nervousness. Lightning illuminated the room, the light carving harsh angles into his face.

“Did -- did you use soap?”

“Yeah.”

“Warm water?”

The knuckles that brushed over his mouth made the boy sink into the bed. His lips parted at the feeling of skin, the reason for his questions long forgotten. Kevin bit his lip and grunted in his throat as Eddward’s breath spilled out.

The cap flew off of the bottle and hit something audibly on its way down, but Double Dee was transfixed by the waxy glistening as Kevin squeezed the liquid onto his middle finger. Lightning flickered and for a breathtaking second the athlete was outlined in white.

“Just breathe for me.”

Biting his lip, he nodded.

Knees rising reflexively as the redhead rubbed his stomach, the genius squeezed his eyes shut.

Cold liquid contrasted with the jock’s warm skin and the smaller boy yelped. “I - I don’t know if I can-”

“Just look at me, okay?” The mouth against the side of his neck nipped softly. Opening blue eyes, Eddward nodded.

The slicked finger pushed against his resisting body and he groaned softly in arousal and terror. “Look at me, babe,” Kevin breathed, and he obeyed. “Don’t fight me. Relax.”

Fighting his body’s desire to ward off all unfamiliar touch, the dark-haired boy pulled in a long breath and willed his clenching muscles to still. The intruding digit eased forward and his body screamed in protest. Kevin broke eye contact to bite his neck again, tongue laving the goosebumps below. Eddward groaned, turning his head to give the redhead more access, and the finger slid further in.

“Ahhh! Kevin, _it hurts!_ ”

“Please, just breathe, it’s gonna feel really good, I promise.”

At the string of words against his cheek the genius nodded once. Kevin slid fully in and made a low noise of need at the searing heat.

The athlete began to pump his finger into the quivering body, easing virgin muscles into the sensation of friction. The genius’s voice rose to a desperate cry and he felt his arousal strengthen at the unnatural and yet horribly erotic feeling of being invaded. “God damn, you’re so cute,” he thought he heard Kevin murmur, but the thick swirl of chemicals in his brain wouldn’t allow him to dwell on it. A second lubricated finger pushed gingerly at him, below the first, and the feeling of the pressure doubling made Double Dee jump and wail hoarsely. It took all of his will to bear the impossible stretch but the small length he tried never to acknowledge was pounding at the feeling. Kevin slowly withdrew his fingers, and the genius’s thighs parted a little, his face creasing pitifully at the loss of contact.

“If you don’t want this, you need to tell me now.” The redhead ripped the wrapper open with his clean hand and his teeth, looking at both sides of the piece of latex before rolling it down over himself and hissing at the feeling. The genius watched him as he slicked himself, grimacing in repressed want, and when he turned his green gaze back to the shuddering boy beneath him, Edd whimpered and reached up to touch his chest.

Taking this as permission, he steadied the smaller male by holding onto one hip. He pressed forward cautiously.

The desperate sound the gap-toothed boy made when he pressed against him almost made him lose his composure. Tight, excruciating heat invited him forward, spasming around him as he moaned and watched the genius’s face.

The expression on his face as he gripped the jock’s shoulders and bore the mindbreakingly thick intrusion was so sexy that a chill ran down Kevin’s spine - terror, agony, shame and frantic pleasure. The cords stood out in his neck as he screwed his eyes shut and his tongue rose behind his teeth, back arching as his thighs shook. Kevin pushed in harder, meeting twinges of resistance mixed with wanton gasps and acceptance. He let out a choked sound of frustration as he dug his free hand into the sheets and held firm despite the body shuddering violently around his length. Centimeter by agonizing centimeter he pushed himself in, keeping his eyes on the rapidly evolving expression on the genius’s flushed face. He let out the breath he’d been holding as Eddward’s body took him completely in. Hazy blue eyes met his and thunder shook the house.

“You okay?”

“I will be.” Eddward’s heartbeat was visible in his neck and chest.

“Holy _shit_ you’re tight.”

“Excuse me for not putting assorted items in my rectum in preparation for this moment.”

“Fuck. S’cute when you talk like that.”

“I’m g-going to faint if you don’t move.”

Kevin looked at the slender, shuddering boy beneath him and agreed.

The feeling was unlike anything the brilliant one could’ve imagined. The mind-numbing fullness receded as the beautiful redhead slid back and then filled him until he feared his spine would snap. Kevin groaned low in his throat and began to rock his hips into the inviting warmth.

Arching his back, the genius let loose a high-pitched sound of shocked relief. The pain he had feared paled in comparison to the obscene sound Kevin’s cock made as it slid out of him. Teeth sank into his shoulder and Double Dee watched his nails dig into the redhead’s lean back, clinging desperately.

“Holy _fuck_ you feel good.” The hand gripping his side moved to squeeze his ass, and Edd threw his head back and cried out in shame and pleasure. Kevin was licking the bite mark he’d made possessively when the black-haired boy suddenly _screamed_.

“ _Oh Lord_ , you, I, s-something is, I’m unsure as to-”

“Right there, huh?” A wicked grin crossed Kevin’s features, and he slid his arm into the small of Double Dee’s back, angling him off the bed.

The athlete slammed into the bundle of nerves and snarled when the nerd beneath him cried out hoarsely, hips jolting to meet his dick. Broken syllables spilled from the genius’s lips as he clawed deep scratches into the rippling muscle. Tears dampened his thick eyelashes as white-hot pleasure erupted in his belly, pleasure so painfully acute that he could feel every hair standing on end; every bead of sweat pooling in the dip of his collarbone and between his heaving ribs. Kevin’s lidded gaze boring into his face pulled his eyes open, and the tempo of the hips slamming his ass quickened until it matched his thundering heartbeat.

“K-Kevin, I-”

The pressure was increasing in the genius’s core, his small frame shuddering and pulling taut with each thrust against his prostate. He sobbed and pulled the athlete against him with shaking hands.

“I know -- I can feel you.” Kevin pressed his forehead to Edd’s, heated stare holding fast on the frantic, pained expression of the boy beneath him. He squeezed the smaller one’s ass tighter, pulling him down to meet each thrust. “Js’ let it happen. It’s okay. Promise.”

With that he leaned back and grabbed the genius’s hips with both hands, angling him higher off the bed. He gritted his teeth and pounded into the agonizing heat with every fiber of his being.

 The guttural cry ripped from the tiny one’s throat was punctuated by the crashing of thunder. The beautiful, glistening body spasmed on the sheets, face screwed up in pure, terrified pleasure, and as Kevin felt his insides coil against his approaching orgasm, Eddward’s fists flew from the blanket to drag him down for a frenzied kiss. Eddward screamed into his mouth as he hit his prostate hard, and the exquisite heat tightened on him like a vice, making thrusting almost impossible. “Oh _fuck_ ,” he growled against bruised lips, and his release hit him like a tidal wave just as warmth spattered onto his stomach.

Violent trembling enveloped them both: the elder from exhaustion and amazement at how the scholar had made him feel; the younger from the sheer mental and physical shock of sex. Kevin gazed at Double Dee in awe, and Double Dee blushed all over again, realization dawning on him once more at what he had just done.

The redhead placed an apologetic hand on one thigh before wincing and pulling delicately out. He wrapped the spent condom in five tissues and hid it under some of the neatly-folded papers in the trash.

The sound Eddward made as he cleaned him gingerly off was one of complete and innocent submission. More tissues landed in the little basket and Kevin let his legs collapse under him, face-planting into the sheets and earning a fretful sound from the exhausted mass of nerves beside him.

-x-

Lightning flashed, glimmering off of beakers and jars and the ant farm in the corner. A hundred yellow labels blinked like lightbulbs and went dark.

Kevin stared at Edd, wrapped in blankets and blissfully limp. Dark threads of hair stuck out from under his beanie and his skin glistened. One delicate shoulder was exposed, and it was peppered with marks, some in the shape of teeth and others blooming into dark, shapeless blots. He blinked back sleepily and shifted.

If Kevin had possessed the energy, he would’ve pounced on the scholar and squeezed him until he popped.

“How’re ya feeling?” Kevin’s fingers trailed the length of Double Dee’s forearm, roaming from elbow to small knuckles and back.

“Nice,” came the raspy reply. “Very, very nice.”

The jock smiled briefly. “You’re pretty sweaty. Want me to help you to the bathroom?”

“Mmm.” The genius grunted softly, readjusting his head on his arm. “I’ll shower later.”

The whisper of the rain filled the darkness, sending streaking shadows across the window.

“Need anything? Water?”

“No, I’m…” A yawn; a flash of gapped teeth. “Sleepy sleepy sleepy.”

The redhead sniffed in amusement. “God damn it, you’re cute.”

“Hmmmn.”

Pause.

“Kevin…” Eddward’s eyes had drifted closed, and he opened them once more. “Kevin, we didn’t study. Your … you have final exams and we didn’t study for them.”

The jock laughed. “I’ve got A’s in all my classes, man. I’m good.”

“You…? Oh.”

“Thought I was stupid, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Kevin laughed, putting a hand to his stomach. “Oh my God.”

"Kevin.”

“Yeah?”

"Kevin, I need to inform you of … you are a marvelous … specimen, and I … I am … you are…” Kevin grinned when he trailed off and let out a loud yawn. “Yes. Sleeeepy sleepy sleepy.”

“Sure.” The older boy leaned forward and nipped the genius’s bottom lip. Edd moaned in response and kissed back sluggishly. “I’m gonna let myself out, okay?”

“Hmmm.”

Double Dee squirmed deeper into his nest of blankets and smiled. A few strands of hair fell into his face. Kevin tucked them gingerly under the elastic of his hat.

“Bye, dork.”


	7. The Usual Nonsense

The sleep Double Dee awoke from was so blissfully deep that, though he knew something significant had happened, he couldn't recall what.

When he tried to move his legs, he remembered immediately.

“Oh.”

Pushing himself onto his elbows, the brilliant boy looked down at himself. The comforter sagged away from his frame, revealing bare skin littered with reddish-purple marks.

“Oh dear…”

He looked back up at the ceiling, eyes growing wider as he realized that he was the wrong way on his bed, his clothes were strewn across the floor, and that his spine felt as if it had been snapped.

“Oh good _Lord_!”

The genius scrambled upward, limbs flailing as his muscles protested vehemently. His hair was plastered to his head with perspiration and his legs shook when he eased himself onto them. Everything reeked of Kevin.

“Oh, _I didn’t even brush my teeth!_ ”

Wincing at the feel of his fluffy robe against sticky skin, Eddward collected an armful of clean clothing and limped into the hall. There was a new sticky note on the door.

               EDDWARD,

               YOU DIDN’T RESPOND WHEN WE KNOCKED. IT SEEMED AS IF YOU WERE EXTREMELY TIRED.   
               REMEMBER THAT A CONSISTENT SLEEP SCHEDULE IS THE BEST FIRST STEP TO A HEALTHY AND ORDERLY LIFE!

               HAVE A LOVELY DAY.

               -MOTHER & FATHER

“Good Lord,” the boy repeated, and shuffled to the bathroom.

He washed his hair three times instead of the usual thorough two, taking care to scrub his loofa gingerly over the throbbing hickeys covering his neck and shoulders. His spine ached enough to merit leaning against the wall for support as he lathered his body with soap. When he reached between his legs to sanitize himself as delicately as possible, the soreness made him bite his lip and turn a deep red. The same meager frame he had occupied for years now felt strangely foreign. It didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore.

Fresh hat in place, the genius checked on his various charges. His pet ladybug seemed unoffended by his having neglected to say goodnight to her and the ants marched steadily onward. The tiny potted shrub by the door was bright and glossy, and his cactus stood silently on the windowsill, ever stoic.

“My God, Jim. I’m so sorry you had to see that.”

Jim said nothing.

The journey downstairs was a treacherous one, pinching every aggravated nerve and brushing every wound against the fabric of the oversized sweatshirt he’d selected. Rubbing his back, he shuffled into the kitchen, making a beeline for the pain medication. Even having acquired several inches of height since middle school, it took hopping on one foot to reach the bottle. “Curse these underdeveloped muscles,” he uttered, closing the door of the medicine cabinet and setting the pills on the kitchen table. He prepared himself a steaming mug of hot chocolate and a bowl of fruit before lowering himself carefully into his seat. The lid popped off of the medicine bottle (along with a sticky note emphasizing the correct dosage) and Eddward overturned the bottle. When nothing came out, he shook it gently, hypothesizing that the mediation was in capsule form and that they were simply stuck together.

“Curse this household’s aversion to over-the-counter drugs,” he murmured when peering into the bottle only to find it empty.

Setting the bottle aside and picking up his mug, Eddward breathed in the aroma of rich chocolate. His stomach growled suddenly at the appetizing sensory input. Smiling a little in spite of himself, he took a sip of his steaming drink, relaxing a little at the warmth that filled him.

At the sudden heat, there was a twinge deep in his gut.

Double Dee staggered out of his chair, gripping his abdomen with both hands as his face stained red with embarrassment and horror. “ _Curse my regular bowel movements!_ ”

-x-

“Okay, okay, I’m coming. Geez.”

The pounding on the door set off a chain of explosions in his head, and he grabbed what clothing he could find, scrubbing a hand through his hair. Kevin squinted at the clock in the living room. His scowl deepened when it told him it was 7:15.

“What the heck’s goin’ on?!”

The door flew backward and banged against the wall harder than the jock had intended. The tall figure looming before him raised his arms and began to wave them wildly. “Make haste, he of the many athletic pursuits!”

“Rolf? What the hell, man? I’m like halfway done with sleeping.”

“ _Haste!_ ” The blue-haired foreigner grabbed the athlete by the wrists, dragging him out of the house. “The sun has not yet fully risen!”

“This better be good, dude,” uttered the redhead as he fell into a jog to keep up with his hysterical neighbor.

Not surprisingly, Kevin was dragged into Rolf’s yard. Random items were strewn about, although not enough to be out of the ordinary: a discarded tractor tire, some colorful blankets draped over the clothes line. The chickens watched cautiously as their caretaker led the jock across the grass, all but flinging him onto the stump next to his tool shed. Kevin crossed his arms and leveled a skeptical stare at his friend, knowing that an if an explanation were to come, it would be at Rolf’s choosing.

“Ah, yes, hmmm!” The slender boy rushed back and forth, gathering things and setting them across from the stump where the athlete sat. Kevin’s composure began to crack as the pile accumulated - there were lumpy candles all connected by the same wick, some kind of reddish gourds, and a few disturbingly grimy scraps of fabric decorated with some sort of ethnic pattern.

“My birthday’s not until December,” Kevin said, taking a wild guess at what the frantic display signified.

Rolf’s head whipped around, and there was an intensity in his eyes that almost made Kevin flinch. “Have the lies of this world so deceived you?”

“Uh…”

“HERE! Rolf bestows upon you the Radish of the Second Reckoning!”

“Wow.” The redhead blinked down at the bulbous radish deposited in his lap. “What the fuck.”

“Hush, he of the follicles of August! We must proceed, for this is the final day of the lunar phase! You must embark on your journey into adulthood before the sun warms Nana’s boil!”

“Oh. Okay.”

“What’s goin’ on?!” A tan head popped up, peering over the fence. A piece of wood with crudely-drawn eyeballs rose to accompany it.

“Oh _great_. An audience.”

“An audience is good, yes?” The foreigner was placing a strange object on his head that appeared to be made of leather and fur with ridiculous, fluffy earflaps. “It pleases the spirits to see respect paid to the good fortune of nature.”

“Can I at least know why I’m gettin’ splinters up my ass five hours before I should even be awake?”

“The time has come for your second birth, Kevin!” Rolf sat down cross-legged, placing either end of the rope of candles in tiny clay pots. He pulled a wooden object out of his shirt, something that sort of looked like a flute, and blew a single note. “The first birth is out of Mama’s womb. The second is the birth of a man - your chin is darkened with the hairs of fertility!”

“Wait - what?”

Jonny cackled as the redhead deadpanned.

“Rolf is good, yes? There is no hiding your hullabaloo!”

“Oh my God.” Kevin dragged a hand down his reddening face. “I _so_ do not need this right now.”

To his horror, when the blue-haired teen began to play a disjointed melody on his flutelike instrument, another figure appeared from behind the gate. “How quaint! What are we celebrating?”

“Yeah, what the heck’s he up to this time?”

The effeminate boy and the obnoxious redhead rounded the corner and flounced into Rolf’s yard like they owned it, and Kevin groaned. “Oh God, no.”

“Come! We celebrate Kevin’s foray into manhood!”

“Rolf’s makin’ Kevin a salad,” Jonny added, making little sense if any. Jimmy gave him an uncertain glance before carefully sitting down in the grass.

“How long’s this gonna take, dude? I just wanna go home and sleep.”

“Ahhh. Rolf is no fool, plateau-for-a-chin Kevin. You want to return to your sweet lady, yes?” Kevin slapped his hands over his face.

 “Kevin’s datin’ somebody? Who’da thought, huh, Plank?”

“It’s probably that Elise girl,” Sarah mused, already looking bored. Her head was rested on her hands and she had one lock of bright orange hair curled around her index finger.

“My bets are on Isabelle,” said Jimmy. “She seems to go for the athletic types.”

“Please let me go home,” whined the jock from behind his hands.

“The ceremony is almost complete!” Rolf dropped the flute back into his shirt, producing a match form under the ridiculous hat and striking it on his pant leg. The small group of spectators looked on in mild interest (save for a gleeful Jonny) as he pinched the match between his teeth and lit the wick at either end of the candle string. He spit it out across the lawn, where it hissed out in the dew. Wilfred oinked at it tiredly. “Raise the Radish, Kevin!”

“Jesus,” Kevin said, and held the radish up in the air. Rolf let out an animalistic bellow.

When his friend finally fell silent, Kevin set the radish on the ground and sprang to his feet. “Awesome, can I go now?” He was halfway to the gate before Rolf could respond.

“The mistress of good fortune frowns upon your insolence!”

“Well _that_ was weird.”

“You said it, Jonny. Let’s go back to my place, Jimmy.”

“Let’s. All this talk of unwashed vegetables is giving me hives.”

Still blushing, a scowling Kevin stormed back into his house and slammed the door.


	8. Can We Skip the Dialogue Already

Thick, warm darkness was suddenly pierced by an ear-splitting screech.

Lunging forward, Double Dee pushed his sleep mask above his eyes and squinted blindly. The world spun into existence, the sound reverberating harshly in his skull once more. The scholar winced and muttered to himself as he grabbed for the offending item on his nightstand.

“Vincent residence, Eddward speaking.” His voice was somewhere between gravelly and nonexistent. The cordless phone felt almost powdery against his cheek from the disinfectant he’d sprayed on it the day before.

“I’ve got it! We’ll make a website!”

The roll of Eddward’s eyes at his best friend’s voice was half from exasperation and half from struggling to stay awake. “It’s approximately 3:05 AM, Eddy. Can we talk about this tomorrow?”

“We can make self-help videos! You write the script and I’ll present the stuff! Eddy’s Study Tips, Double Dee, it’s gold!”

“Genius doesn’t wait until breakfast, Sockhead. Are you writing this down? One they get popular enough, we’ll pull ‘em down and make DVDs. We’ll have to move to a bigger city, of course, and set up a place where we do live … what are they? Seminars!”

“I’m hanging up now, Eddy.”

“We’ll have a business! Hot secretaries! We’ll be in dictionaries!”

“ _Thesauruses_ , Eddy.”

“-gonna be RICH!”

“I hope they make energy drinks illegal for your sake and mine, Eddy. I’m going to turn the ringer off when I hang up.”

“-might even get a segment on evening news-”

“ _Goodnight_ , Eddy.” The scholar blinked at the dimly backlit buttons and pressed ‘END.’

-x-

The morning crept on in a miserable drizzle. Double Dee watched through the window as Sarah and Jimmy climbed into a friend’s sleek, black car, his hands drifting idly over the turtle neck of his sweater. Ed bounced out of the house after, sporting a winter hat complete with a mid-cranial pompom. The monster movie lunchbox gleaming in the dim light made the black-haired one smile a little as he pulled his bag onto his shoulder and stepped out the door.

“It’s a cold one, isn’t it, Double Dee?” His towering friend trotted to meet him, smile bright despite the almost icy air.

“Interestingly so considering the time of year.” Double Dee grinned in greeting, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets. He waited until Ed found a piece of fuzz on his coat to scrutinize to glance toward Kevin’s house. The lights appeared to be on, but the redhead was nowhere in sight. The bite marks beneath the fabric of his sweater burned as his heart rate accelerated slightly.

“Okay, okay, I’ll do it when I get home, I promise!”

Ed and Edd turned to see their short friend waving dismissively as he exited his house. Before he could slam the door, a wadded up scarf smacked him in the face. Double Dee covered his laughter with one hand as Eddy flailed furiously, stalking down the stairs and slinging the offending fabric around his neck. The outline of his mother was visible for a moment as she pulled the door shut behind him.

“Lovely weather we’re having, wouldn’t you say?”

At the genius’s teasing, the egomaniac stopped dead in his tracks and leveled a less-than-pleased stare at him.

“Yeah yeah. I gotta fold stupid socks when I get home tonight.”

“Good _heavens_ ,” said Eddward sarcastically.

“Socks are nothing to sneeze at, Double Dee,” Ed chided, taking up the rear as the three started toward the school. “One time I found a sock under the chair in my room that was so old that it changed from black to all green and splotchy.”

“That’s mortifying, Ed.”

“No, his name was Percy.”

“Can we just get to school already?”

Hair blowing in the icy breeze, Eddy stomped ahead, leaving Double Dee to sigh and follow as Ed chuckled to himself and trotted along behind.

-x-

“So, like, what are they again?”

The stunning blonde stared at the five tiny smears in the container cupped between Eddward’s hands.

“Planarians, Nazz. Flatworms in the class Turbellaria. They were left over from one of the labs we could conduct for extra credit.”

“Ohhh. So they’re little worms.”

“More or less, yes.” The raven-haired boy smiled brightly. “They’ll make a lovely addition to my ragtag collection of fauna.”

“Awww, how cool.” The cheerleader turned toward the English wing of the school and offered him a wave. “You and your worm things have a nice day, Double Dee!”

The genius beamed, stopping at his locker. “Farewell!”

The scholar gingerly placed the container of water on the top shelf of his locker, mind already racing through a thousand names for his new charges. He’d have to get out a fresh notebook to record their growth as soon as he got home. That in itself had him nearly bouncing in place. He absolutely _adored_ stationary.

“Uh, hey.”

The genius’s heart stopped.

A graceful hand clasped the door to his locker, pushing it open enough to make it creak in protest.

“H-hello.” Eddward turned toward him, heart pounding in his ears. Kevin’s hands were shoved in his pockets and his gaze was clear and sharp. The raven-haired boy lifted his hands, probably to smooth out his shirt, but they were shaking so hard that he let them fall to his sides.

Head lowered, the redhead bit his upper lip. He seemed frighteningly still compared to the genius’s terrified shuddering. “How are you?”

The first attempt at words yielded nothing. Edd swallowed thickly and tried again. “I’m … not sure.” His knees suddenly buckled and he leaned against the lockers before he could faint. The smell of Kevin’s cologne and hair and skin had reached him.

“I gotta ask you something.” Edd nodded once, then a few more times to make sure his meaning was clear. Kevin shifted his weight from one foot to the other and Double Dee noticed that he inhaled a deep breath and held it. “…Can I come over tonight?”

Fear and giddiness whirled in the smaller boy’s head, making him squeak out a disbelieving laugh. “I’m not … it’s a school night and I don’t -- it isn’t -- finals, Kevin, don’t you have finals you should be…?” At his name passing the brilliant boy’s lips, the athlete’s eyes darkened and his posture drew rigid. Double Dee watched his pale throat as he swallowed.

“I had one this morning and one after lunch. None tomorrow. I can print out my schedule if you don’t believe me.”

“No, I-” He took in a shaky breath, then blew it out through his mouth. “I believe your statements to be accurate.”

Footsteps clattered past them, snippets of conversations drifting overhead. The jock stared down at the scholar and the scholar stared back. Kevin leaned in, and though it was a casual movement, Edd let out a tiny sound and squeezed his eyes shut, legs quivering as heat exploded low in his stomach.

“Please,” Kevin rasped.

The genius forced his eyes open and was left breathless by the boy inches away from him. His words were barely a whisper.

“It’s imperative that you focus on preparing for your exams.”

“Jesus, Edd. I can’t focus on _anything_. All I can think about is tapping that sweet little ass.”

Edd made a shrill noise and gripped the hem of his shirt. “ _Please,_ ” the redhead hissed.

The black-haired boy gazed at him breathlessly and fisted his shirt as if it would hold back the ache gaining strength between his legs.

“What time do your parents get home?”

The genius gulped. “Nine-thirty.”

“Yeah…” Kevin’s pupils visibly expanded, engulfing his vivid green irises. “Rad. I’ll be there at five.”

The frenetic bliss in the petite one’s chest exploded. He closed his eyes and pressed his overheated frame against the cool metal of the lockers. He licked his dry lips and exhaled, unaware that the redhead’s gaze followed the movement of his tongue.

“V-very well, then.”

The athlete held him in his paralyzing stare for another moment before looking at the floor. “See you then, dork.”

When he turned and strode away, Double Dee turned deliberately into his locker and let out a breath. The flatworms steered drowsily over the water’s surface, oblivious to the scale of their keeper’s anxiety.

“Mother and Father would go into cardiac arrest if they learned of this,” he murmured faintly.

“Cardiac arrest in aisle three,” Ed echoed cheerfully, and Double Dee jumped and screamed.

“Good _lord_ , man!” The scholar had a hand on his chest and he slumped forward, attempting to ward off the persistent spinning quality the world had taken on. “Was that really necessary?!”

“Sass is not a good look for you, mister,” Ed replied, wagging a finger.

Letting out a slow and even breath, the turtleneck-clad boy began plucking the necessary books from his locker. “I do apologize, Ed. I’m at wit’s end, it seems.”

“Awww. All is forgotten.”

A yellow hand came down to pat Double Dee, scooting his hat around on his head. Tugging his beanie back into place, the ravenette muttered, “Have you washed those today, Ed?”

“Why the heck is Kevin on your ass so much?”

Yet again, the voice of an unexpected party made the sockhead jump and release a high-pitched sound. Eddy slouched beside Ed, a single grimy notebook tucked under his arm. Eddward turned to face him, finding his usual skeptical expression in place.

“Kevin was merely inquiring as to the finals schedule for underclassmen,” Edd explained, quietly horrified at his ability to concoct a lie so abruptly. “I’ll admit, I was surprised that he queried me in particular. Being aware of much of the school’s scheduling makes me a bit of an expert, I guess.”

“Speaking of experts, have ya come up with any new ideas for our self-help business?” The shortest of the Eds lit up immediately, holding his head higher. “Lumpy and I are gonna brainstorm in study hall. We need a catchy tagline for all those fliers and commercials.”

“Perhaps we should secure a place among the school organizations first, Eddy.”

“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Sockhead. We’ll work on that too. Is there, like, a form we gotta fill out before we become an official club?”

Double Dee sighed, and when he refused to respond, Eddy crossed his arms and mirrored his nonplussed expression. Ed stared past them, scratching his nose.

Throwing his free arm in the air, the genius exclaimed, “Oh, all right already! I’ll pick the forms up after lunch.”

Eddy grinned. “ _That’s_ what I like to hear.”

“Don’t forget to scrub behind your ears,” Ed called over his shoulder, following Eddy as the halls began to empty of students. Double Dee waved back, shutting his locker door and hurrying to his next class.

The genius wouldn’t realize that he had forgotten to get the paperwork until just after one in the morning.

-x-

“Well, after her brother called, we didn’t hear anything for a while, so Mom and I were like … we didn’t want to call back and make things worse, y’know?”

Rolf muttered something unintelligible, scooping one of the bluish seafood balls out of the sandwich bag in his lunchbox. Nazz took a sip of her juice and held up a finger to indicate that she needed a minute.

Kevin turned his cheeseburger, endlessly searching for a spot that would spark his appetite. The blonde beside him resumed her story as the figures hunched over the table devoured their meager lunches. Disgusted, the jock set down his burger and fidgeted anxiously as Nazz gestured with the hand not spearing green beans with a fork, tightening his grip on his knees as he tried not to think about the taste of the brilliant sophomore’s skin.

An elbow prodded his bicep, making Kevin’s head snap up. Nazz was giggling, eyes on a figure moving quickly across the room toward the corner lunch table. “Double Dee is so cute. He cracks me _up._ ”

Fighting the urge to trace Edd’s backside with his eyes, the redhead smirked at the cheerleader. “I dunno what I’m supposed to say, Nazz.”

“That he’s fucking delectable?”

Nazz’s expression flashed to one of mock disgust as she looked at Nat. The animated boy met her stare and then Kevin’s startled one, running a hand through his green hair. “What, am I supposed to pretend it isn’t true? Have you guys ever seen him get all excited over a science project? Holy _shit_ is it cute.”

“He was showing me these, like, worms earlier,” Nazz agreed. “They were left over from a lab and he’s taking them home. He was so happy about them.”

“Ohhh...” Nat peered across the room, not at all concerned with being noticed. Eddward was laying papers out in front of Eddy, talking animatedly and gesturing delicately. His black turtleneck looked as if it might swallow him up. “Aye. Cap’n Nat would plunder _that_ booty.”

Ignoring his hormone-fueled agitation, Kevin leveled a bored expression at his hyperactive friend. “Is there anyone you _wouldn’t_ rail?”

Nat whirled to face him, setting his elbows on the table and pointing a finger. “No, and that’s _nothing_ to be ashamed of.”

“Hey guys!”

The cheerleader and the jock both jumped, turning to face the figure looming between them. “Hey, Jonny,” the blonde greeted, trying to smile politely and failing. The olive-skinned boy had Plank tucked under his arm and a rainbow of plastic, crackling baggies.

“The foreign language club is selling fruit and nuts! Anybody wanna buy?”

“…I take that back,” Nat uttered thoughtfully. Kevin turned back to his friend and grinned.


	9. Mosaic

Double Dee’s afternoon was strangely calm.

Stepping into the house, he removed his sneakers, locked the door, and had the foresight to pick out a soft shirt and pajama pants to set on the counter for after his shower. He washed himself thoroughly, coating every inch of his skin with soap and scrubbing vigorously. His hands shook as he smoothed the pearly body wash over his stomach and thighs, but he swallowed down the tremors of anticipation and kept cleaning. He brushed his teeth for exactly five minutes and attempted to smooth his hair down for another fifteen even though he concealed it under his beanie a moment later. The scholar swept the carpets and dusted both upstairs and down, and after much deliberation, he elected to place his container of flatworms on an empty space on the shelf next to his closet that stayed untouched by sunlight. The label of “PLANARIANS” went on the side, and “PLANARIAN DATA” was pressed into the cover of a notebook he selected from his drawer of unused school supplies. He nursed a steaming mug of peppermint tea as he went about his duties, and when the clock in the living room read a quarter to five, he settled himself on the couch and waited.

Kevin knocked on his door three times at 4:52.

The younger male’s heart was hammering in his throat the moment he rose to get the door. His stomach was in knots yet nonexistent as he turned the lock, and when he met the broad-shouldered redhead’s eyes, he felt as if the entirety of his body mass had all but evaporated.

Kevin approached him without a word, and as the black-haired boy backed up, the athlete slammed the door behind him and locked it without looking away. One shoe landed halfway on the mat and the other missed entirely, and Edd found that he couldn’t care less if it had flown through his mother’s china cabinet and broken half the things in it.

The athlete stood before the brilliant one for a long moment, hands hovering at his sides and breath coming out in heavy gasps, then grasped one slender wrist and began to pull the genius up the stairs. Edd didn’t even try to look away from the powerful muscles in his legs and his backside as Kevin all but dragged him. The older male took hold of both of his arms and backed him against his door to shut it, and Eddward let out a sigh of relief as chapped lips crashed into his own. Strong hands roamed down his sides and memorized their subtle curves and Kevin growled softly as Edd swatted his snapback off to claw at his scalp.

“God damn, did I miss you.” The jock gazed at him through half-lidded eyes, smirking when he squeezed the ravenette’s ass and brought a desperate moan out of his parted lips. Embarrassed and irritated, the petite boy lunged at him, capturing his mouth and eagerly sucking the redhead’s tongue between his teeth. The wet heat caused the athlete’s pants to become unpleasantly tight, and he let loose a possessive growl before pulling the genius from the wall to back him against the bed.

The sight of the athlete leaning over him was the most frightening and beautiful thing Eddward thought he had ever witnessed, the strong line of his jaw and his powerful shoulders taut with desire; his expression one of single-minded obsession.

When teeth sank into a faded bite mark over his collarbone it took everything in him not to defy all laws of physics and melt into the sheets.

“P-please be mindful that _ahhh_ … that I … need - need to cover those up - _nnngh!_ ”

“Don’t care.” The redhead’s voice was barely a growl against his neck, body pinning his down. “Let people see that you’re mine.”

The thought alone made Edd’s skin flush all the way down to his chest. Kevin nudged the loose neck of his shirt out of the way to suck hard on a spot near his shoulder and the genius was unable to stop himself from letting a low groan out, arching against the delicious heat of the athlete’s firm stomach. Knees came to rest on either side of him and strong hands were suddenly pulling him fully onto the bed. The tongue grazing the roof of his mouth sent a desire through him that was all-consuming. The tiny part of him still attempting to ignore Kevin’s smell told him that the feeling should have terrified him.

Then again, the jock was running a palm up and down his stomach and purring into his ear, and that seemed far more convincing.

The redhead knotted his fingers with Edd’s, nudging the younger male’s chin up to claim the tender skin just beneath his jaw. The thrum of the genius’s soft sound of approval resonated through his teeth as Kevin inhaled. Double Dee smelled like fruit and warmth and spices - a scent that Kevin remembered somehow, from moments of his childhood when they wound up too close; something illusive and heady he’d catch for a split second in the school’s halls. When he released one small hand to fight loose his belt buckle and pants, Edd clutched the remaining hand almost frantically. The clack of the buckle and the shrill hiss of leather against denim registered distantly as Eddward’s head lolled back against the blankets to give Kevin room to suck a dark line of bruises down the center of his throat.

He didn’t realize that the belt had been slipped around his wrists until it was too late.

A devilish smirk spread across his face as the redhead leaned back and pulled the knot tight. Double Dee yelped in shock. “Ahhh … I - K-Kevin? _Kevin_!”

Giving only a shiteating grin, he effortlessly pulled the squirming boy’s arms above his head. The loose ends of the belt went around the bedpost with ease, and Kevin buckled it for good measure.

By this point, Double Dee was all but hysterical.

“My _Lord_ , Kevin, what are you _doing?!_ ” He gave a violent tug against his restraints. When the loops around his fists refused to yield, his eyes grew huge, his legs opting to kick madly in protest. “Unhand me this instant! This is _wildly inappropriate!_ ”

“Not a chance, babe.” The redhead’s fingertips skirted them hem of Eddward’s soft shirt, tugging it upward to reveal the smallest strip of goosebumped flesh. “Makin’ you squirm is way too enjoyable.”

“ _Kevin!_ This -- this is so lewd! So shameless! Have some _decency_ , man!” The ravenette wriggled wildly as the jock all but beamed with delight. When he cautiously maneuvered himself onto the dork’s legs to avoid being kicked in the face, Edd shrieked. A dozen half-finished sentences spilled from his lips, dying with every stroke of callused hands over his overheated stomach. Double Dee had begun to warn of the damage possible when circulation is cut off at the wrists when Kevin began to nip at the delicate skin between his bottom rip and his hip. Words became syllables. The jock’s fingertips hooked into the waistband of his pants and began to pull.

Syllables became gasps and whimpers.

Green eyes burned into the younger male’s face as the athlete sucked and bit down on yellowing bruises before licking a possessive strip across his stomach. The fuzzy plaid of his pajama pants tangled at the brilliant boy’s knees at his writhing, aided by the redhead removing his weight enough to shove them out of the way. Glassy sapphire eyes fluttered shut as Kevin gripped his hips and stilled him. A languid bite to his side brought forth a breathless whine. A tongue-slicked kiss to the sensitive spot just inside his hipbone begat a cry.

When it finally occurred to the genius that his underwear was being tugged off, the slow-dawning look of sheer horror on his face was simultaneously the most endearing and hilarious thing Kevin had ever seen.

“Oh … no. No, no no no no NO NO NO-”

As his arousal bobbed free, Eddward let loose a strangled sound somewhere between fear for his life and humiliation to such a level that his concerns were justified. Freezing air was mixed with fire-hot mist as Kevin blew down his length. The black warmth clouding his mind and the slams of adrenaline to his consciousness when his gaze met burning green eyes sliced his protests apart, obscuring the line between revulsion and desperation.

Kevin pressed his lips to Edd’s arousal.

Senses cutting out to make room for the feeling of the athlete’s mouth on him, the genius went rigid. The redhead kissed him again, letting the velvety inside of his bottom lip catch and drag across the painfully hot flesh, and the brilliant one cried out softly, spine arching against strong hands. The athlete stiffened at the pitiful sight, stare becoming predatory as he rubbed soothing circles into the boy’s fragile skin and dragged his tongue from the base to the tip.

Edd gave a strangled sob, and it was the sexiest thing Kevin had ever heard.

The genius was plunged into oblivion when Kevin sucked him into his mouth, enveloping him in sinfully velvety heat. Knives of white-hot pleasure raked down his spine and his stomach as his hips jolted fruitlessly against the redhead’s hold. Tongue roaming along the pounding vein he found, Kevin closed his eyes, reveling in the agonized gasps and sobs drawn from the beautiful boy’s mouth. He eased into a slow, unsteady rhythm that rendered the younger incapable of grasping any sense of control. When he reopened his eyes, the genius’s dark lashes were wet with tears and his expression was one of exquisite agony.

It was approximately fifteen seconds before the younger male’s voice had risen to a scream.

“ _Kevin!_ Nahhh … I - I can’t - Kevin I CAN’T I CAN’T I MIGHT - _ahhh_ \- please, oh, Kevin, _please please please please PLEASE-_ ”

The cry ripped from the ravenette’s throat as he came made goosebumps break out over every inch of the redhead’s body.

The tongue dragging him into mind-breaking pleasure stroked him as his chest and his back and his balls seized violently in orgasm. Kevin’s intoxicating scent drifted around him as unconsciousness flooded over him like a wave, the world beneath him vibrating deeply at the aftershocks rattling through his body. Existence faded into a distant point of light, shrinking further and further above him as he went completely limp.

The air was freezing cold when Kevin pulled off of him, drawing a whimper from the boneless figure.

“Damn,” Kevin breathed after licking his lips, but the teasing words died on his tongue at the look of unabashed bliss on the smaller boy’s face. He gave a final, gentle bite to the inside of Eddward’s thigh and smirked when it earned him an exhausted whine.

The thump of the athlete flopping down beside him was barely palpable through the blue-eyed boy’s stupor. Callused fingers trailed across his still-heaving chest and down his side.

“You’re pretty cute when you’re a wreck, dork.”

Double Dee made a series of small, half-conscious sounds, his skin glimmering with sweat as he attempted to shift.

“Huh?” Kevin blinked.

“Mnngh … depraved, debauched, defamatory … I can hardly believe that just transpired…”

“Glad you enjoyed it,” the redhead replied loftily.

Blue eyes flashed wildly as the genius turned red from his scalp to his shoulders. “I _never_ said that I-”

Kevin swallowed his protests immediately, bringing a hand up to cup his jaw. To Edd’s chagrin, he melted the moment his mouth made contact with the athlete’s. He accepted Kevin’s tongue when it swept over his lips and moaned softly, feeling his still painfully oversensitive cock aching with renewed need.

“Jesus, babe.” Kevin gazed down at the flustered scholar. “You _still_ want it?”

“Do you plan to mock me endlessly or alleviate the issue?”

In response to the words whispered defiantly against his lips, Kevin opened his mouth for another kiss and pulled away just as Edd moved to make contact. The beanie-clad male whined in frustration and wriggled as the athlete deftly undid his restraints. Delicate hands clenched and unclenched as the blood flowed back into them, eyes fluttering closed in restless relief before flashing up to Kevin’s gratefully.

Kevin was on him in an instant.

The smaller trembled as the athlete pulled him off the bed to crush their bodies together, biting his lip until he was granted access behind gapped teeth. Edd clawed at his still-clothed chest with tingling fingers, whining anxiously as he was pulled into the jock’s lap.

“Mmmm.” Kevin nipped at his upper lip, half-grinning as he pulled back. “So hot.”

The genius let out a strangled noise, ducking his head shyly. “Please refrain from such preposterous statements. They aren’t necessary, as you should … know by now.”

“Just cut to the chase already?” Kevin gave a half-shrug, voice thick with lust. “Okay.”

“ _That’s not that I meant!_ ” Edd raised his hands in protest when he was thrown back against the mattress, the shadow of the lithe athlete falling over him.

“Less _scholarly_ parts of you would prove otherwise.”

As the genius looked from the athlete’s horrifyingly attractive face to the part of himself Kevin was referring to, he sputtered out a sound of distress. “How dare you! In n-no way is such vulgar commentary helpful!”

“Awww, c’mon, man.”

Kevin’s fingers grazed over the squirming genius’s stomach, raising rows of goosebumps as Double Dee babbled his protests.

“You should see the look on your dorky face.”

“I refuse to be persuaded by your preposterous palaver!”

“What the fuck are you even saying?”

“ _Don’t touch my nipples!_ ”

“ _There’s_ somethin’ in English.”

A scuffle ensued; the scholar alternating between gripping the redhead’s shoulders encouragingly and grabbing at his wrists to stop him as Kevin admiringly drew lines down his sides. When he slid his palms under Edd’s hips to gently grip his ass, the halfhearted fighting stopped altogether.

Glassy sapphire eyes opened, blinking rapidly at serene emerald. A moment of complete silence passed between them as heat bloomed beneath hands and pulses quickened.

They kissed until their bodies melded together and air was but a barrier between them.

When Kevin pressed a trail of kisses to Eddward’s thigh and lifted his legs to drape them over his shoulders, the boy whimpered frantically, hands clenching and unclenching above his head. Gapped teeth sank into his bottom lip and he blinked immense blue eyes. It was the closest he could come to conveying his desperation to be spread apart, to be held down, to be dominated.

“Oh my God,” Kevin breathed, and the look of distress on his face made Double Dee freeze in sudden worry. “You are just … so _edible_.”

The scholar licked his lips and swallowed before carefully responding, “N-no pun intended, I assume.”

In less than a minute, their bodies were twisted together and Edd was clawing bloody gashes into the athlete’s back.

-x-

The brilliant boy gazed at the athlete through dark lashes, squirming closer. The pair stared at each other in silence as the light drifted up the walls, cooling in hue as the shadows stretched and reached long fingers toward the ceiling. Pale muscular legs were tangled with darker, lean ones. Double Dee had a swath of blue sheet pulled up to his face, and when he exhaled, the faint scent of fabric softener mixed with his fragrant breath and drifted to Kevin.

The redhead raised a hand to the genius’s lips, running the pads of his fingers across them. “What’re ya thinkin’ about?”

“Mmmn.” Edd shifted his head to capture the athlete’s fingertips in his mouth. “Your eyes are a remarkable color.”

“Oh yeah?” A vague smile played on his face.

“Yes. They’re not emerald. A forest green, perhaps? Pine, almost.” His raspy voice was obscured ever-so-slightly by the hand over his chin. Kevin drummed his fingers and Edd swept his tongue over them, tired eyes glinting playfully.

“So what you’re sayin’ is you can’t take your eyes off me.”

Long lashes batted. “You _are_ terribly attractive.”

Kevin pressed a kiss to the bridge of his nose. “You’re the genius, dorky.” The younger boy pinched gently down on his fingernails and the corners of his mouth curved upward.

It was so cute that Kevin nearly had a heart attack. Realizing that he had probably been gawking, wide-eyed, at the genius, he cleared his throat.

“Rolf knows something’s going on. He did a weird ceremony and made me hold this huge radish. Guy’s a freak.”

“His culture’s traditions can indeed be a bit off-putting…”

“Nazz too. I keep denying it, but she knows I’m into someone.”

Edd blinked. “Nazz would recognize the indicators, I suppose.”

“I was never with her, y’know.”

The genius swallowed thickly. Kevin moved to lean on an elbow, the sheets pooling at his hips.

“Dated for a while. We kissed, but we never did anything. It just didn’t feel right.”

Edd nodded. “How many people have you been sexually active with?”

“Two.”

The scholar said nothing. He had planned to lose his virginity to a virgin, but he hadn’t deluded himself about the gorgeous boy sprawled out beside him.

Hearing his next question before he said it, the redhead looked away and uttered, “You’re the first guy.”

When he looked at the blankets and began fiddling with the handful of fabric still clasped in his palm, Kevin scratched a finger across the smooth cloth of his beanie.

"You gay or bi?”

“I…” The genius swallowed, eyes flashing sluggishly up to the model planets hanging above. “I think of myself in a romantic context so rarely that I haven’t yet determined my intimate persuasions.”

A long moment of silence stretched between them.

“You still keepin’ Dork and Dorky in the dark?”

Edd smiled brightly. “A clandestine affair. Exhilarating, don’t you think?”

“Not to mention Shortstack would kick my ass into next year if he found out.”

“Almost certainly, yes.” The smaller giggled softly. When he opened his eyes, Kevin’s smirk had faded and he was staring thoughtfully, expression unreadable.

“You’ve probably got like a shit ton of poems memorized, right?”

“I’m not sure where ‘shit ton’ falls numerically, but I’ve memorized a dozen or so.”

“Awww, you swore.” Before Eddward could get flustered about being fawned over, the athlete tapped a finger to his upturned nose and said, “Recite one for me.”

“Oh, um, very well, then.”

Naked except for his rumpled beanie, Double Dee bit his lip thoughtfully and began to twiddle his thumbs through his handful of sheet. The jock felt himself grinning at the unintentionally adorable display.

After a few moments of deliberation, Edd began to speak.

“The only ghost I ever saw  
Was dressed in mechlin, --so;  
He wore no sandal on his foot,  
And stepped like flakes of snow.  
His gait was soundless, like the bird,  
But rapid, like the roe;  
His fashions quaint, mosaic,  
Or, haply, mistletoe.  
  
Hi conversation seldom,  
His laughter like the breeze  
That dies away in dimples  
Among the pensive trees.  
Our interview was transient, --  
Of me, himself was shy;  
And God forbid I look behind  
Since that appalling day.”

"Nice.” Edd gave a single nod and a bright smile. Who wrote it?”

“Emily Dickinson. A truly remarkable writer.”

“She thought about death a lot, didn’t she, dorky?”

“Death is a wondrous and perplexing phenomenon. I would imagine that everyone thinks about it more often than they realize.”

“Nah. I don’t.” Kevin rolled onto his back, fitting his palms beneath his head. Double Dee shifted and gave him an incredulous look.

“Oh, really? Tell me, what _do_ you think about besides undignified athletic endeavors and your bicycle?”

Green eyes turned on him, glinting with delight. “Your ass, obviously.”

 The redhead howled with laughter when the genius sputtered and shoved him off the side of the bed.


	10. A Bag of Peppermints

The sun crept above the treetops, accompanied by the irritated chatter of grackles and sparrows. Disgruntled families shuffled, clad in their best clothes, into minivans and tiny, energy efficient cars, then proceeded in a sleepy herd onto the highway toward one of the town’s three churches. Nazz waved to her parents as they pulled out of the driveway, silently relieved to have a project due the next day so she could stay home. Double Dee sat up and stretched exactly thirty two seconds before his alarm was set to go off, grunting as the pleasantly heavy feeling blossomed in his muscles. He made himself a cup of tea before checking on his various pets and plants, jotting down a few notes about his flatworms and watering Jim and his tiny shrub. He took a shower and got dressed, hiding his head beneath his cap and scrutinizing himself in the mirror.

He had gone to the store Saturday to pick up a bottle of concealer, finding that the shade darker than his mother's peachy one was closer to his coloring. Careful fingers dabbed at the liquid before tapping a spot onto his bruised throat. _Non-comedogenic, he reminded himself. All natural ingredients that double as sunscreen. No perfumes. No unscrupulous chemicals._

"And maximum buildability," he added aloud, smoothing the color over a violet crescent bearing an uncanny resemblance to Kevin's teeth. Leaning closer to scrutinize his reflection, Double Dee hummed in thought. Another dot of makeup was tapped onto his neck.

The scholar's thoughts wandered to his studies. He had reviewed the material for all of his classes, taking note of the few facts he hadn't yet memorized. If he allotted himself ten minutes to look over the list at lunch and after dinner, he imagined that he'd be sufficiently prepared for finals. Good.

 _Tap tap._ The overlapping hickeys peeking out from the left side of his collar were all but unnoticeable now. If anyone asked, he could blame it on getting too close to one of Rolf's chickens during an inspection in agriculture class.

His planarians were doing quite well too - he had charted their activity in response to light and mild temperature changes, and the handful of tiny brown creatures were seemingly as healthy as they had been on Friday afternoon. Perhaps he could find a clever way to incorporate their behavior into one of the essay questions on the biology exam. He was sure Mr. Sanders would appreciate the reference to non-mandatory material.

 _Tap tap tap._ The small shadow of a faded bruise beneath his ear was almost perfectly concealed now, and he shuddered at the memory of the lips and tongue that had put it there. Putting on cosmetics had seemed preposterous at first, but as well as the brand worked, he thought the head of the drama club might consider using it for future productions. The recent advancements in dermatology were unarguably quite amazing...

Eddward trotted back to his room and placed the bottle of makeup back in its place, tucked behind a stack of special-edition dictionaries in one of his drawers. Everything was flawlessly cleaned; the carpet swept, the glass wiped down, his clean sheets tucked into the mattress and smoothed painstakingly. He gave a long stretch and a sigh, interrupting the humming he hadn't realized he'd begun.

After Kevin's visit on Friday evening, his every muscle felt strangely relaxed.

-x-

Eddy arrived at Ed’s house at 10:30, and as he raised his fist to knock, the door flew open.

“EDDY,” bellowed the tall, smelly boy, leaping to embrace him. “Long time no see, mister!”

“Yeah yeah.” Eddy struggled until he was released, his frown not lasting for longer than a moment. “It’s been like twelve hours. Straighten your bowtie, Lumpzilla.”

“Already did it.”

The short teen stared at the enormous boy, whose red, polka-dotted bowtie was clearly crooked.

“Whatever. Let’s go get Sockhead.”

The pair shuffled up the tidy lawn to stand side by side on the abnormally clean doormat. Eddy waited for about fifteen seconds before deciding that Ed wasn’t going to knock.

As soon as the greedy one’s fist came up, the door opened, a streak of gray flying out.

“Greetings, gentlemen! What a stunning morning.”

“Geez, Double Dee. Save your energy for the scam.” Eddy pulled the door shut behind him as Ed chuckled, bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet at Eddward’s enthusiasm.

The genius turned back to face them, clad in dark jeans and a loose gray shirt. He had an armful of pamphlets and a paper bag swinging from his elbow. “Forgive me, Eddy. I’m simply overcome with joy at such a marvelous day.”

“I slept in and Mom made pancakes,” Ed agreed. “And Sarah didn’t even hit me once.”

“Why Ed, that sounds like a positively lovely morning!”

“Sure, I had a Pop Tart. Can we get to the suckers already?”

Double Dee frowned. “ _Members,_ Eddy. Not suckers. We want them to join our group, not be insulted.”

“Suckers or not, here we come,” said Ed, breaking into a trot across the yard.

Eddy grinned at the scholar. “See? Ed’s got the idea, Double Dee.”

Left behind as his companions started out across the cul-de-sac, Eddward tightened his grip on his fliers and muttered, “Could you straighten your tie, Ed?”

-x-

“Yes, yes! Here I am!” Rolf threw open the door that was being banged mercilessly on. “Ah, hello, do-la-ti Ed boys. The cockles shine brightly in the heat, yes?”

“Um.” Double Dee blinked. Eddy elbowed him gently in the side. “Hello, Rolf! The school year may be drawing to a close, but next year promises new challenges and new opportunity. That’s why we are inviting you to join our newly-formed study group, Ed’s Excellence in Education! If the principal accepts my proposal, your participation over the course of the summer will count as two of your extracurricular credits! We’ll meet weekly.”

The blue-haired boy took the flier extended to him by Ed and raised an eyebrow. “Hmmm. Yes, this is very interesting, as Rolf is still unused to your country’s strange and repetitive educational system.”

“So?” Eddy tapped his fingers together expectantly, a wide grin spreading across his face.

The foreigner tapped his chin, staring intently at the clean font across the front fold of the paper. “Rolf will think about it. Good day to you, Ed boys! The potatoes will not peel themselves!”

“Wait!” The shortest of the trio stepped forward as the door slammed shut, holding out his jar. “There’s a membership fee…”

Double Dee glanced at Eddy worriedly as his imploring expression faded into one of mild irritation. Ed grinned and gazed where Rolf had been a moment before, papers sticking out of his pockets and shirt collar, tie still askew. Sending fliers scattering in the breeze, he swung an arm into the air. “BYE, ROLF!”

“Forget Rolf,” Eddy grumbled, turning and pacing back across the grass. “Jonny’ll listen.”

“Your optimism is inspiring, Eddy,” chimed Double Dee, smiling his gap-toothed smile and hurrying after him. Ed gave a final wave before leaving their neighbor’s doorstep.

-x-

_Bonk._

“Hello, Jonny!”

_Bonk._

“Hello, Jonny!”

_Bonk._

“Hello, Jonny!”

“Ed, you’ll give yourself a concussion!” Double Dee approached his strangely-scented friend, putting a hand on either of his shoulders and holding him from whacking his head against the door again.

“What the heck are you guys doing?”

At the bald head popping out of the bushes, Eddy screamed. “What the heck are _you_ doing?!”

“Salamanders,” the olive-skinned boy replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Plank peered out of a gap in the shrub’s leaves. “They’re nifty!”

“Wanna join our club, Jonny?” Ed waved a brochure around.

“Mmmm … nope!”

“You’ll get a free peppermint,” Double Dee chimed in, pulling a red and white candy out of his paper bag. The strange kid hesitated. He descended back into the bushes, rattling around for a minute. Eddy cupped a hand to his ear when mumbling emerged from within the branches.

“Okay!” Jonny reemerged, and Plank popped up beside him. “But only if Plank gets one too!”

“It’s a study group,” Double Dee explained, holding out a brochure as the dirt-covered boy came over. “Over the season, we’ll meet weekly and work on cultivating good study habits. There’s a possibility … that…”

Ignoring the genius completely, the bald-headed kid dug a hand into the bag of mints. “Cool! Thanks, guys!”

“Ah-ah-ah!”

The shortest of the Eds jumped in front of the boy, shaking his jar.

“There’s a membership fee.”

Jonny’s eyes narrowed. “How much?”

“Five bucks. Plank pays too.”

“Plank gets in for free or no deal.”

A stare-off ensued. Double Dee blinked, hiding his worried expression behind the flier he held, and Ed squinted at Jonny in an attempt to mimic his best friend.

“Fine.” Eddy threw his hands skyward. “The log gets in free.”

“Plank says you’re a no-good two-faced lily-livered hack.” He dug around in the pocket of his muddy overalls, finding five rumpled dollars and dropping them into the jar flippantly. “Hey Double Dee, will we get mints at meetings, too?”

“Why, I - um, I don’t see why not.”

“Allrighty! Let me know when it starts!”

“But you didn’t take a-”

Jonny dove back into the shrubbery, cackling manically as mulch flew in all directions.

“-flier,” Eddward finished.

“C’mon, kids.” Eddy grabbed Double Dee’s arm and the corner of Ed’s jacket collar and tugged gently. “Time’s a-wastin’.”

-x-

“Who’s next on our list of hapless victims, Eddy?”

“NAZZ’S HOUSE!”

The tank of a teenager swept an Ed under either arm and plowed up to the blonde’s door. He plopped Double Dee next to him and set Eddy gingerly between the brightly-flowered potted plants under the awning.

The shortest of the Eds froze immediately, nearly turning white.

Double Dee watched Eddy and Eddy stared complacently at the door. Ed blinked one eye and then the other before clearing his throat.

“KNOCK KNOCK!”

The shortest whirled around, raising his hands pleadingly. “Ed, wait!”

The creak of the door swinging open behind him froze Eddy in place. Ed beamed and Double Dee offered a polite smile. “Hey, guys.”

“Hey, Nazz.”

Turning around, the leader of the group rubbed the back of his neck self-consciously. She leaned on the doorframe and crossed her arms, an amused smile spreading across her round face. “Hi, Eddy. How are you, dude?”

“Yeah. Uh, ahem - great.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at his feet. Ed and Edd traded a glance. “So we’re, uh, doing this club thing.”

“A study group,” Eddward volunteered.

“Yeah, what he said. We’re meeting once a week. Just to learn how to, like, take notes and stuff.”

“Free peppermint,” Ed added.

“Cool.” She stepped away from the doorframe. “Where do I sign up?”

“Uh…”

“Eddy’s all sweaty like my grandma,” Ed whispered.

“It’s - ya don’t have to sign anything yet. We’re just handin’ out brochures and stuff.”

“Free peppermint,” reminded Ed from behind him.

“Oh. Great.” The blonde took the papers handed to her, skimming them for a moment. When Ed held out a mint, she laughed and accepted it. “Thanks Ed.”

“You’re welcome, fair lady.”

The brilliant one leaned toward his friend. “ _Eddy.”_

“Huh?”

“The membership fee, Eddy.”

“ _Ohhh_. Haha.” He turned back to Nazz and shrugged. “It’s more of a donation, really.”

The girl nodded, pulling a pink wallet from her baggy pants. “No problem! How much is it, Double Dee?”

“Five dollars,” the scholar replied, clasping his hands and smiling politely.

“Not bad,” the blonde mused. She slipped the rolled-up bill into the jar clutched at Eddy’s side. “Let me know when we start meeting, okay?”

“Yeah.” A mix of disbelief and excitement filled the short one’s voice. “Sweet.”

“Okay, then. Bye, you guys!”

“Bye, Nazz,” the tall one and the smart one replied in unison. She gave a small wave before stepping back inside and closing the door.

“That went surprisingly well,” mused Eddward, eyes fixed on the wreath adorning the door.

“Sure, yeah,” Eddy agreed, suddenly turning and shuffling between his friends. “Whatever. Let’s go get Jimmy.”

“My toes are tingly, guys.” Ed looped his arm through Double Dee’s, dragging him along before he could protest.

-x-

When Jimmy came to the door, he was clad in a fuzzy bathrobe and had a mug of something steaming. “Oh! Hello. What dubious service are you offering today?”

Eddward let out a squeak of laughter before covering his mouth with his hands. Eddy shot him a dirty look.

“It ain’t no dubstep service,” Eddy snapped, sticking a hand out and waving it at Ed. The yellowish male pulled a rumpled flier out of his shirt collar with his teeth, then dropped it onto the smallest Ed’s open palm. “It’s a study group. Meeting weekly. If Sockhead comes through for us, you’ll actually get school credit for it.”

The delicate boy blinked. “A study group, eh? Intriguing.”

“We _are_ asking for a small membership fee, just to procure supplies. We’ll provide you with a complimentary notebook and mechanical pencil at our first official meeting.”

Eddy gawked at the genius. “We’ll what now?”

“Sure. I’ll drop five bucks for it. Let me go find my change purse.”

“Wait. Seriously?”

Jimmy stopped in his entryway and glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t test me, Eddy. Spa days tend to make me charitable.”

“Okay, okay.” Eddy nodded twice and frowned at his feet.

“My,” Eddward exclaimed, “this is turning out to be a marvelous venture!”

“Sure is, Double Dee.” The brilliant one squinted, hit with a wave of peppermint when the largest Ed opened his mouth. Jimmy returned, accepting a flier and a brochure before counting out five dollars’ worth of quarters.

“Thank you, Jimmy. We look forward to seeing you at our first meeting!”

The younger boy smiled brightly. “You too, Double Dee.” Turning to Eddy, he added, “If my money goes to anything other than supplies, Eddy, I’ll have your hide.”

Eddy responded with a petulant scowl. Jimmy patted him condescendingly on the head and disappeared into the house, narrowly missing the scammer swatting after him.

“I think that’s about everybody.” The genius tidied his handful of papers. “With this many potential members, I’m inclined to believe that the school will allow us to earn extracurricular credits! I’ll file a detailed report of each session and e-mail them to Principal Hartford for his approval.”

“Awesome,” said Eddy, voice soft with amazement. “My scam worked. My scam actually worked!”

“It isn’t a scam, Eddy. Knowledge is invaluable! Not to mention-”

“Let’s hurry up and get Kevin so we can go back to Ed’s and watch movies.”

“ _MOVIES AT ED’S._ ”

The brilliant boy’s mouth closed slowly. “Oh … right! Sh-shall we proceed?”

“Since _you’re_ so popular, you do the talking,” said Eddy, giving him a light shove onto the sidewalk in front of the athlete’s house. 

“Certainly,” Edd responded faintly, and he wrung his hands together so tightly that a knuckle cracked. “Ahhh … ha ha. Let’s!”

The two gawked at their usually-articulate friend for a long moment. After about ten seconds, Ed’s jovial expression began to fade, his eyebrow dropping steadily until he appeared to be profoundly unamused. “Double Dee?”

The individual in question chirped, startled. “Yes, Ed?”

“MOVIES AT ED’S.”

The world vanished from beneath his feet as Eddward was swept into the air and carried up to the door. Still holding the genius above his head, Ed drew his arms back, angling Double Dee like a battering ram. “KNOCK KNOCK-”

“ED, STOP!”

That was how the jock found them - Eddy grinning expectantly from behind, Ed rearing back to smash a hole into his house, and Double Dee flailing, eyes bugging out of his head.

Immediately, Ed’s anger disappeared. “Hello, Kevin,” he greeted, setting Edd lightly on his feet. The redhead grinned at the trembling boy in front, tucking his hands into his pockets and knocking his shoulder against the door.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“A-- a thing,” Double Dee squawked lamely.

“A thing, huh?”

“I club - a group! A study group. A group that studies study skills!”

“ _Oooo_ kay.” Kevin did his best to look unamused, but bit his bottom lip in a way that only Edd would know was to hide a laugh. The genius’s face burned red as his friends’ dumbfounded stares burned into his shoulder blades.

“We’re recruiting members for a week-oncely - um, a once-weekly study group over the course of the summer. There’s a five d-dollar entry fee, but I’m attempting to get Principal Hartford to allow members to earn two credits toward the coming academic year for it. Isn’t that marvelous?!”

The redhead gazed at the genius, a smirk twitching at the corners of his lips. The fire racing to Double Dee’s groin was dizzying. He fisted the handles of his paper bag as he hid his crotch with it, dozens of peppermints beginning to rattle audibly against one another inside.

“Yeah, rad. I’ll be there.”

“You’ll _what?_ ” chorused the trio.

“I’ll make sure to get the five bucks to Double Dork later. I don’t trust you with it anyway.” He shot a glance at a now-fuming Eddy.

And then he leaned forward and reached into the bag, the back of his hand brushing Edd’s pants through the paper as he grabbed a mint.

The world had faded into a tiny pinpoint when the redhead straightened to his full height and unwrapped the piece of candy to toss it into his mouth. “Later,” he drawled with the mint between his teeth. Double Dee squeaked shrilly when the door closed in front of him.

“Jesus, Sockhead, it’s not like he’s gonna break your legs,” Eddy finally uttered. “Ya don’t have to be so freaked out by him…”

“I’m - I’m sure you’re right, Eddy.”

The genius turned back to face them, his face glowing red and his hat rumpled. His shoulders were drawn up to his chin and a frazzled smile was plastered onto his face.

“Let’s return to Ed’s and commence with the movie night, shall we?”

“Sure, whatever.” Eddy stared at his brilliant friend for a long moment before shouting in alarm as Ed picked him up by the collar of his shirt, carrying him like a kitten as he raced to his house.


	11. And the Weird Weather Continues

Kevin hadn’t realized that he’d dozed off until his nose began to itch. Frowning, he scrubbed his face.

A prickly, fluffy feeling grazed over his nostrils once more.

Again, the redhead rubbed his nose, snorting.

When the tickling sensation appeared a third time, the athlete opened his eyes and glared. “God dammit, what the fuck.”

Nazz blinked down at him, swaying in and out of the center of his vision as the hammock creaked softly.

“I fell asleep, didn’t I? What the heck is that?”

The blonde released the tiny feather she was holding, letting it flutter down toward the jock’s face. He blew out a puff of air and swatted it away. “Gross, Nazz. That’s probably got mites and shit.”

“Big deal.”

Wind gusted through the yard, rustling the grass around Kevin’s face and back, and he breathed in the scent of it, gaze resting on the grayish sky.

“What’re you thinking about?”

He shrugged in reply as the cheerleader settled back into the hammock, the pages of her magazine rustling. “Nothing.”

“You’re never thinking about nothing,” she murmured. “Is it the person you’re into?”

“No.”

“So there _is_ someone.”

“ _No_.”

Nazz was peering down at him again, now smiling. “Rolf says it’s, like, a pretty big deal. How did he say it…? ‘Casanova-Kevin boy has found the one who he will share his loins and his asparagus with.’ Something like that.”

The jock slapped a hand over his eyes. “Oh my God.”

“Come _on_ , Kev, just give me a hint.”

“How do you know he didn’t just mean pork loins?”

“Blonde?”

“Nazz, no-”

“Brunette.”

Kevin sputtered. “I’m not - no…”

Her face fell. “Redhead. Oh my God, please don’t tell me it’s Sarah.”

“ _God_ , no.”

“Is it someone athletic?”

Making a face at the maddening barrage of questions, Kevin replied, “Not really.”

“How well do we know them?”

“Well, I’d say I know them a little better than you, Nazz.”

It wasn’t until the athlete met the blonde’s saucer-like stare that he realized he’d made a mistake. “ _Kevin_. You’re sleeping with somebody!”

He was unable to stop the grin that appeared on his face. “Not a lot of sleeping gets done, actually.”

“You better not be screwing around. People don’t just get over you, dude.”

“Thanks.”

Giving Nazz a smug look, the redhead folded his hands behind his head. The next thing he saw was a beauty magazine landing on his face.

“I’m gonna find out who it is, Kevin.”

The athlete pulled the magazine off and squinted at the model stretched across the pages. “She’s too skinny.”

When the blonde didn’t reply, he glanced up at her to see her giving him an unamused look.  “Anorexia’s a serious issue,” he uttered, raising his eyebrows and tilting the magazine to show her the picture.

“So is you being a giant turd,” she retorted, batting her long eyelashes. The wind feathered her bangs as she turned her gaze toward the space off in the distance that her companion was staring at. Her usual tone of condescension was notably absent, the shared feeling of exhausted relief at having completed finals tugging too persistently at either teen to allow for any true annoyance. Kevin breathed out slowly and let his eyes fall shut.

“All right. Fine.”

Frowning, the athlete cracked an eye open. Nazz was back to lounging, her face hidden from view as she settled into a gentle swing.

“I was gonna tell you something, but if you’re keeping secrets, then I’ll keep mine too.”

“Huh?”

The rustling of the trees filled the pause, rising in pitch as the balmy wind grew in strength and swept down across the yard.

“Nazz, come on. What were you gonna tell me?”

“Seriously, Kev, it’s nothing.”

“ _Tell_ me, Nazz.”

“You first, dude.”

Now sitting up, the redhead gave an exaggerated scowl. “So not cool.”

The blonde half-shrugged, not looking up from another magazine she’d brought. _Ten Sexy Summer Hairstyles That Will Make You Irresistible_ , it boasted in bold pink font. Nazz shoved a hand into the pocket of her shorts, not breaking the steady sway of the hammock, and extracted a peppermint to toss into her mouth.

Lying back against the earth, the athlete pulled the bill of his hat down and let his eyes drift closed.


	12. Tingles Galore!

The first day of underclassmen finals sprang upon the cul-de-sac with a shockingly clear sky and a promisingly dry breeze. Sarah and Jimmy dashed to get into a friend’s car, wholly subscribing to the belief that Starbucks could raise one’s grades by at least a letter. Rolf aided the ambience by shouting and pacing around his yard, seemingly unhappy with Victor having sampled the nearly-ripe crop of tomatoes.

Double Dee exited his house and straightened his sweater, face bright and his humming optimistic. Eddy was considerably less cheerful as he trudged across the pavement toward his intelligent friend. He reeked of his mother’s homemade waffles, which Edd knew she forced on him every time she got wind of an upcoming exam.

“I hate waffles,” Eddy muttered predictably. Double Dee placed a hand on his smaller friend’s shoulder, trying to come up with something encouraging to say. He was interrupted by a bellowing, growing exponentially louder as its source neared them. Ed tore around from behind his house, arms flying out behind him as he ran. His brows were drawn together in a look of utter distress.

"NOT GOOD, GUYS," Ed bellowed, hopping from foot to foot when he reached the pair, eyes wide.

"Ed, what's wrong?" Double Dee brought a hand to his face in worry. "I'm sure we can assist you."

"Sarah wanted to borrow my allowance and I said no. Look what she did!"

Whimpering pitifully, Ed thrust his hands out. "Oh _dear_ ," Edd murmured, and Eddy cackled beside him.

Ed's nails were neon purple and sparkly with white tips.

“Oh, Ed, I’m so sorry. I’m certain Mother has nail polish remover…”

“Are you kidding?!” Eddy bumped the brilliant one out of the way, grinning. “Ed, they’re beautiful!”

“ _I wanted pink_ ,” the yellow boy wailed, his pupils drifting in slightly different directions. Double Dee raised a hand to pet his arm comfortingly, glaring as Eddy covered his mouth with his hands and let out a high-pitched laugh.

“We’ll take them off as soon as school is out. Try to focus on doing well at your exams.”

The tallest of the three bit his quivering bottom lip as tears welled in his eyes. “They smell funny, Double Dee!”

At this, Eddy fell to the ground, laughing hysterically.

“What’s so funny, Eddy?”

Ed blinked forlornly as Double Dee turned to face the blonde. She had looped an arm around Eddy’s shoulders, and the short one had predictably stiffened and shut his mouth. She grinned at Edd when he met her eyes and he waved back cheerfully. “Greetings, Nazz. Sarah gave Ed a manicure without his consent.”

“Wow,” the girl said, brows drawing together despite her smile. “That’s something Sarah could do, all right.”

“I’m surprised Jimmy wouldn’t let her do it to him instead,” Eddy muttered, cheeks pink as he looked at his feet. Ed sniffled.

“Anyway, Double Dee, Kevin wanted me to tell you that he can pay you the fee for the study group after school. If he didn’t stay _up_ until five in the morning playing video games, he’d be here to tell you that himself.”

“Loser,” muttered Eddy. Nazz flicked the side of his head.

“You’re just jealous that we and the seniors get out a week early. Besides, you know you’ll be doing the same thing as soon as you’re done.”

Eddy’s face got even redder. Double Dee covered a grin with his hand. “Ah, thank you, Nazz. I’ll be sure to come straight home.”

“Cool.” Removing her arm from Eddy’s shoulder, the blonde poked him in the chest. “Take it easy, you three. Do well on your tests!”

“Thank you, Nazz. We’ll do our best.” Double Dee was the first to walk away, earning a small wave from her.

The trio walked to school, Ed pouting, Eddy flustered into silence, and Double Dee pressing a hand to his chest, trying to calm his accelerating heart rate.

-x-

Kevin awoke at 12:57 PM and spent a good thirty minutes staring at the ceiling before deciding that getting out of bed would be a worthwhile endeavor. He played a mindless racing game for a while, got discouraged at how much he’d forgotten over the last few months, and wandered to the kitchen to microwave three frozen breakfast sandwiches. It occurred to him to go bug Nazz to make sure she’d talked to Double Dee for him, but Nazz never forgot to do anything, especially in the case of keeping the people she liked on good terms. The jock managed to keep his mind off of the strange boy from across the street until he grabbed a wad of clean clothes and stepped into the shower. As he scrubbed his hair and tried to keep his thoughts on the possible colors he could have his bike painted, flickers of sensory input began to interrupt him. _Could get douchebaggy flames on it._

A flicker of radiant blue that sparkled when he smiled.

 _Could go Peach Creek orange, of course. I_ am _here for another year, after all._

Pale, smooth skin that smelled like something crisp and sweet.

_I could do a dark green, but the damn shop charges extra for shades they don’t keep on hand. I’d be better off doin’ it myself._

A painfully adorable grin. That ridiculous gap in his teeth.

_She’s been chrome for so long._

The intoxicating taste of his mouth.

_Should I keep her chrome?_

The ridiculous innocence he radiated, even when Kevin had him pinned down and his hands on his-

“ _Fucking shit_ ,” the redhead shouted, shaking with irritation. Clenching his teeth, he turned to face the faucet and turned the water all the way to cold.

-x-

The redhead wandered over to Double Dee’s house ten minutes before the genius typically arrived home, stuffing his hands in his baggy jeans pockets and praying that he wouldn’t get out late and that nobody else would get out early and see him, fidgety and all but bursting with teenage-strength hormones, on the dork’s perfectly-clean front stoop.

When the door swung open, Kevin leapt to his feet to find Edd blinking up at him. He dove for the genius, slamming the door behind him as his heart leapt into his throat.

“Kevin!”

Two purple cups appeared between them, the steam rising from them knocking the redhead back. Double Dee smiled up at him brightly. “It’s orange pekoe,” he explained.

Taking the mug held out to him, the athlete stared at the petite boy in amazement. Edd cupped his tea in both hands and sipped it. The way his cheeks and fingertips flushed at the warmth made Kevin’s throat dry. He caught himself before the younger male looked back up at him and took a sip.

“Mmmm.” Senses flooded with spices and citrus, Kevin blinked. “Damn. Not bad, Double Dork.”

“It’s splendid, isn’t it?” The brilliant one moved to lock the front door and Kevin took the opportunity to guzzle down most of his tea.

As the jock’s stomach was filled with a wonderful, sleepy warmth, a small hand closed around his bicep. He stared at Edd in surprise. “Shall we?”

The sophomore led the junior to his room, setting his tea on the nightstand before climbing onto the bed and crossing his legs. Warily, Kevin followed suit, settling himself across from the genius.

“So, Kevin, how was your day?”

“Uh,” uttered the redhead stupidly. “Pretty boring. I watched a couple episodes of Sixty Minutes and waxed my bike a … couple times.”

“That’s certainly not something to feel bad about. Completing the school year with high grades is quite the accomplishment. You deserve some time to dedicate to leisure.”

“Sure. I guess that’s true.” Kevin shrugged and looked at his hands. Somewhere along the line, he’d started twiddling his thumbs. “…how’d yours go?”

It was Double Dee’s turn to shrug. “As well as a day of final exams can, I suppose. My statistics final was a fair representation of the curriculum, and the literature exam was all essay. Mrs. Gausser gave us all of the possible questions ahead of time. I hope to receive a 4.0 for my grade point average.”

“ _That’s_ a real shocker, dork. You’ll definitely get all A’s.” The smaller male broke into a sheepish grin at the redhead’s words, cheeks reddening ever so slightly.

“Your confidence in my abilities is greatly appreciated,” the genius murmured, meeting Kevin’s stare and gripping the fabric of his sweat pants to stem the nervousness in his voice.

“Are you kidding? Everybody knows your brain is amazing, dude.” He reached out and flicked Edd’s nose, earning him a startled sputter as the genius raised his hands defensively. Kevin swallowed, his nonchalant smile fading at the ravenette’s vulnerability. “Hey, Double Dee.”

As his bright eyes flicked up to meet the athlete’s, Kevin leaned across the gap and pressed his lips to Edd’s.

Double Dee was caught off guard, freezing in place as the jock captured his mouth. After a heartbeat, the genius moved against him, the spices on his breath spilling out as he caught the redhead’s upper lip. Stiffening, Kevin grunted and balled his hands into fists, the urge to pin the smaller boy to the mattress rising up like a tidal wave. Knuckles white and shaking, he tilted his head and kissed back, goosebumps exploding down his arms and back at the feather-light touch of the brilliant boy’s lips as he leaned closer, his long eyelashes grazing the redhead’s cheekbones.

“How…” Drawing back, Kevin shook his head. “How are your friends?”

“They’re quite well,” Eddward rasped, pupils huge as he stared at a spot on the bed between them. “Sarah’s been giving Ed a hard time, but I’m actually pretty confident that he’ll pass all of his courses. Eddy’s excited to start the study group, of course.”

“Mmmm.” Kevin swallowed, struggling to compose his face into its normal expression of disinterest. “Are you excited? I mean, don’t tell me Eddy’s gonna teach the damn thing. I’d rather stick my head in a beehive than listen to his harpy voice.”

“I’m very excited, yes. Eddy has taken the role of treasurer, so I will, indeed, be your instructor.”

“Huh.” The redhead smirked, catching the genius’s blue eyes. “Will you be wearing sexy glasses and sittin’ all stretched out on a desk in front of us?”

The look of unabashed delight on Double Dee’s face left him shocked. “ _Hardly_.”

“Shame.”

Eddward leaned forward once more, putting his weight on his palms as his face stained a dark crimson. “If you say so.”

Kevin could hardly contain his grin enough to kiss back.

Nipping at the younger boy’s lips, the jock scooted toward him to place his hands on slender knees. Edd made a tiny sound at the contact and edged closer without breaking their locked mouths. He sucked in a breath when Kevin’s long fingers slid up his thighs and a tongue probed the gap between his soft lips, and when Kevin’s tongue brushed against his teeth, the genius let himself moan and loosely grip the athlete’s black shirt. The redhead nuzzled his jaw, breathing in the smell of his skin, and Edd shivered submissively and slid himself into Kevin’s lap.

“You’re all I think about, Double Dee,” he whispered, hands finally coming up to hold tiny hips. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

The genius said nothing. When the jock didn’t move, he squeezed his broad shoulders and pressed his lips to the pulse throbbing beneath the redhead’s pale neck. Kevin went rigid immediately, his arousal pressing into the smaller male’s lap as he groaned and cringed with need. There were nimble fingers in his hair and his cap was gone, and when a hot tongue flicked over his flesh, he swallowed down a snarl, holding himself back with every ounce of his will.

“Fuck, Double Dee, you - you can’t do that.”

The ravenette’s voice was barely audible, his lips never completely leaving the athlete’s skin. “Why not?”

“Because m’not gonna be able to control myself and I could hurt you. Bad. _Aaagh_ -”

“I trust you,” Edd whispered. He pressed a gentle bite onto the abused spot and shifted in Kevin’s lap, rubbing heat against heat and hearing his breath hitch as the redhead’s did the same.

Firmly locking his arms around the small of the petite boy’s back, the athlete let himself fall back against the blankets. He gripped Eddward’s beanie and pressed a palm to his spine, swallowing the genius’s moan as their tongues clashed. It was only a matter of moments before Edd was squirming against his chest and tugging at his shirt. The look he flashed the jock was of pleading.

Chuckling breathlessly, Kevin complied and tugged his shirt off. The younger’s fingertips were immediately on his overheated skin, tracing the sharp lines of muscle greedily. He watched as Double Dee bit his lower lip, a thousand thoughts flitting through his sapphire eyes as he admired every dip and ripple beneath the athlete’s flesh. His hands grazed the space between the redhead’s hips and Kevin sucked in a breath, squeezing his eyes shut.

The brilliant boy quirked an eyebrow. “A sensitive area, I presume?”

“Yeah,” Kevin rasped.

When Edd replaced his palms with his mouth Kevin let out a hoarse cry. He gripped and released fistfuls of sheet, struggling to put his hands anywhere but on Eddward’s fragile body. A silky-hot tongue drew cautious strokes across his skin as the genius’s fingers rested on the waistband of his pants. Kevin sank his teeth into his lower lip and turned his blurry stare to the window. A low growl bubbled up in his throat when Edd closed his lips and sucked, and when teeth came down on his screaming nerve endings, he arched off the bed and snarled “ _shit._ ”

The younger boy made a small sound of alarm when Kevin pushed him onto his back and leaned over him, cupping his jaw in one hand and capturing his soft lips. There was little resistance as Kevin sat up and tugged the shirt off of his slim body; a breathless cry when he ran his hands down the ravenette’s sides, licking and nipping his soft skin as he pressed him into the mattress. Kevin helped him wriggle out of his pants and shoved them off the side of the bed. Double Dee had time to make a faint sound of displeasure before two pairs of socks had joined the growing pile of clothing, and after a struggle to extract the essentials from his back pocket, Kevin kicked his jeans off to complete the pile.

The heat of the athlete’s figure hovering inches from his disappeared, making the smaller boy blink, dazed. “What … Kevin, where are you…”

“I’ll be right back, I promise; I’m just gonna wash my hands quick. I took a shower before coming over, but-”

Edd’s fingers closed around Kevin’s wrists. “Please. It’s okay. Please don’t leave.”

Kevin stared at the wide-eyed genius for a long moment, too weary with want to argue. The anxiety in the brilliant boy’s expression grew, and he released the jock’s arms, fumbling with the little tube of lubricant and struggling to unscrew the cap. Smiling fondly, the redhead took it from him and opened it. The younger male’s heart pounded visibly in his chest as the athlete slicked his middle finger until a bead of the fluid dripped down his wrist. Emerald eyes met dazzling blue, and Eddward swallowed and spread his slender legs, his face flushing even more as he bared his arousal and all of his vulnerability to the redhead.

A strong hand rested on his belly, kneading soothingly as Kevin pressed his finger to the smaller male’s opening. Edd let out a choked gasp and threw his head to the side, frame shaking as the jock groaned softly at the suffocating heat and eased the digit further. The stutters of resistance were faint, and when friction began, the genius’s face crumpled in desperate agony, his spine bowing as his nails scratched down the redhead’s shoulders.

“Fuck, babe.” Kevin glanced up at Double Dee’s face before returning his focus to dripping more fluid onto his hand, the ravenette’s squirms and whimpers making the blood scream through his ears. “Relax.”

“C-can’t,” Edd hissed, and when Kevin carefully pressed a second finger into him he cried out and gripped the athlete’s shoulders until they started going numb. “I just want you ins-side me.”

Within five seconds, Kevin had ripped the condom out of its packet and was rolling it onto himself. The genius peppered gentle bites across down his jaw and neck as he drizzled the rest of the lube into his palm and coated himself in a few quick strokes. Turning his attention back to the smaller boy, Kevin recaptured his mouth and wrapped a hand around his straining erection. Edd sobbed against his teeth, fingertips scrambling on the athlete’s back as he squirmed desperately. “Kevin, please, _please_.”

Growling, the redhead rolled onto his back and pulled Edd on top of him. He cupped the base of the younger male’s skull before reaching down to grip the genius’s ass. Kevin couldn’t fight back a grin when Edd whined impatiently against his lips. “Wanna try it like this?”

Unable to explain that he was willing to stand on his head if necessary to get Kevin inside him, Double Dee nodded furiously. Aided by the redhead’s steadying hands, he settled on top of Kevin, face scarlet as he gazed down at him.

Large, graceful hands rose to caress his sides, threading a frightened sound from his mouth as his head lolled back. "Just take it easy, babe. Go slow."

The petite one placed a careful hand on Kevin's knee as he lowered himself, trying not to start shaking at the sight of the boy's daunting length. The frigid air on his opening was broken by the feeling of the older male's arousal. He groaned softly in anxiety as shaky legs gave just enough to let the pressure of the redhead's length press against him, and Kevin was kneading his hips gently, hissing soft words of encouragement.

"Just like that, just breathe. I won't hurt you. J's take your time- nnngh-"

Edd whined softly as he lowered himself, body shuddering at the tightness of the athlete's cock spreading him apart. The hands steadying him gripped tight to keep him from sinking too quickly and Kevin bit his lip hard, struggling between watching the beautiful, innocent expressions flitting across Edd's face and throwing his head back.

"K-Kevin - I - it's almost too-"

"I know, I know, just relax, I swear I won't hurt you," the jock groaned like a mantra. Edd cracked an eye open and nodded tightly.

When the genius slowly began to work himself onto the dauntingly thick shaft it was all Kevin could do to keep from slamming into the blessedly tight heat. "Ahh! Oh _fuck_..." The cords stood out in his neck as the athlete's face stained dark and his heart galloped faintly in his chest. Giving a soft keen of relief, Eddward sank until his ass was against the redhead's hips.

Kevin came spectacularly close to fainting at the suffocating heat.

"Holy fuck that feels good," he rasped breathlessly. The petite boy shuddered violently, and Kevin could feel every twitch and tremor. Bright blue eyes opened, holding Kevin's gaze as the redhead bit his lip and tried to hold back the blush creeping down his neck.

Edd leaned down to crush his mouth to Kevin's and muffled the older boy's moan at the shift against his cock. The hands on his narrow hips left them to claw into his beanie and the back of his neck, and as the genius sucked the redhead's tongue into his mouth, the violent spasm of muscles became a frantic grind. The redhead threw his head back and hissed through clenched teeth as his lover writhed against the searing heat filling him up. The brilliant boy's movement gained a desperate rhythm and he let out a wanton moan, his bruised lips brushing Kevin's collar as he clawed at the redhead's stomach.

“I’m … it’s so … ahhh.” Edd’s head fell forward as he shakily readjusted his grip on the athlete’s shoulders. “I’m so … out of shape…”

 A flicker of a smile crossed his features before Kevin tightened his hold on the genius’s hips, pulling the younger male almost completely off of his cock and slamming him back down. Edd threw his head back and let out a scream. Shifting to better angle himself, the redhead groaned low in his throat and began thrusting deep into the smaller male, uttering his name over and over as he sank into the excruciating heat. “Please,” the dark-haired boy gasped, half-lidded eyes foggy with lust, “Please, please don’t stop.”

“Never,” Kevin growled, smirking for half a second before returning his attention to finding the spot that would make the ravenette completely incoherent.

In exactly four seconds, the slender male let out an ear-splitting cry, his spine arching as his head lolled back and tears spilled down his cheeks. “ _Found it_ ,” Kevin hissed under his breath.

In five more thrusts, Edd’s tiny body had gone rigid and there were tingling spots on Kevin’s ribs where he had torn skin away. The blessedly tight heat gripping him clenched and the younger boy’s face contorted as the explosions of pain and pleasure built in the pit of his stomach. “Kevin … _please_ …”

“On it, babe.”

The athlete’s control began to slip away as he pounded into the genius’s lithe body, urged on by his desperate cries of encouragement. Strands of black hair slipped loose and fluttered down to frame Edd’s face and cling to his lips as he bucked back against the redhead’s thrusts, and as Kevin felt that uncanny surge of fire that would bring on release, he saw all shame and fear leave the smaller boy’s eyes for the first time. He choked out a gasp, staring in awe as his lover’s back bowed to allow him in deeper. His wits came back to him enough to wrap a hand around the smaller male’s erection.

The cords stood out in his neck, his teeth flashing in a noiseless scream, and Kevin thought that Edd was the most flawless thing he had ever seen.

Pushing him through his orgasm, the redhead crushed the genius's hips down onto his lap once and twice before the excruciatingly tight coil within him exploded. He roared hoarsely as he came, feeling every centimeter of silky warmth when the smaller shuddered through his final spasm.

Eddward collapsed, boneless, onto his chest, and despite the sweat prickling all over his body, Kevin pulled him closer. Double Dee gasped for air and clung to the older boy as his eyelids fell shut. A long moment passed as the two struggled to catch their breath, the chill of the air drawing goosebumps up all across their entangled limbs.

"Damn," Kevin panted, resting his chin on top of Edd’s cap and making a shiver of delight race down his spine. "I didn't even notice it was raining."

"Mmmm … meteorology wasn't on my mind either," mumbled the younger male against the jock's collarbone.

"Jesus. It's a total downpour."

"That's nice."

Eddward breathed in the scent of Kevin’s skin, letting the profound heaviness sink into his muscles. Kevin’s fingers drew small circles into his back, trailing down his spine, beneath his shoulder blades, up his neck. He gave a shudder and Kevin smiled at the edge of his vision.

“Edd?”

“Hm?” The small one blinked sluggishly. The redhead’s heartbeat thumped rhythmically against his ear.

“What’s under your hat?”

 _Oh_.

Kevin’s ministrations on his skin stopped. “It’s totally okay if you don’t want to tell me, though. Just whenever you want to. Or not at all. I swear I won’t make fun of you.”

The genius sighed, causing the redhead to clamp his mouth shut. “Might as well, I suppose.” Before Kevin could sputter out a protest, the petite boy reached up and pulled off his hat.

“Holy shit,” Kevin murmured, unable to help himself.

His eyes fell upon a mass of unruly hair, falling in thick strands over Eddward’s ears and forehead. Some pieces were almost kinky and some of it was long enough to brush the nape of his neck. And just right of center, a shock of gray exploded out of his bangs.

Double Dee’s jaw was tight and his eyes were downcast. Kevin chuckled and brushed his fingers through the unruly strands.

“And I didn’t think you could get any cuter.”

The look that appeared on the genius’s face was one of utter disbelief. Grinning at him affectionately, the redhead pushed his fingers into the unkempt mess, and the cynicism, elation, and amazement all fighting for footing in the smaller boy’s eyes began to fade into a blur of utter euphoria at having his ever-concealed scalp touched. Pursing his lips and frowning at the assault on nerve endings that hadn’t been acknowledged by anyone but himself in years, Eddward hid his face beneath the strong line of Kevin’s jaw. The small tremors that moved between his shoulders became fewer and fewer until his thin body was completely limp. The elevated, anticipatory thump that had begun to feel familiar and safe slowed against the athlete’s chest. He counted the easy, fragile drumming as the boy’s breaths deepened and his creased and twitching brows relaxed. The room’s sharp angles and tidy colors faded as the jock let his own eyes close for a minute.

Kevin ran his fingers through the ends of the genius’s hair, separating the twisted black tufts. “Hey babe?”

“Mmm.” The smaller figure’s grunt was barely audible.

“ _Babe._ ”

The look Edd gave him would’ve killed a feebler organism. The redhead ran a thumb over his full lips. “ _Yes_ , Kevin?”

“It’s really stormin’.”

Laying his head on the athlete’s chest, Double Dee gazed out his window. Rain was spattering down in sheets and the wind had climbed to a constant rumble as it buffeted the house.

“Nnngh … ‘mount of precipitation h’s been abnormally high … this year…”

“Don’t you have a thing?”

Blue eyes rolled sluggishly up to meet alert emerald. “A _thing_ , Kevin?”

“A thing! You know, a little weather alarm-box thing?”

A sudden thud had the pair jumping, Double Dee clinging to the jock’s chest as he sat up sharply. A branch fell from where it had struck the window, leaving bark and leaves plastered to the glass before a howl of wind ripped them away.

Edd blinked and opened his mouth to ask Kevin what a little weather alarm-box thing was when the lights flickered and went out.


	13. Aftermath

“ _Shit_.”

There was a moment of hesitation, the pair staring with saucerlike eyes at the place where the branch had struck. A lawn chair tumbled across the grass below, and a slew of wrappers and papers ripped across the sky.

Kevin began to fumble for the tissues on the nightstand. “Here.”

Startled out of his hesitation, Double Dee fumbled with the shirt Kevin had thrown him, yanking it over his head as the athlete cleaned himself hurriedly. Tossing the condom in and the tissues in the trash, he leapt to his feet and tugged his boxers on. A crash made the pair jump, but the sheets of rain made it impossible to see what has caused it. The house groaned around them.

“Hurry, Edd!” The redhead grabbed his lover’s narrow wrists, dragging him toward the edge of the bed.

“I can’t walk,” the genius rasped, “I don’t think I can walk.”

“ _We gotta go, now_.”

Grabbing another handful of Kleenex, Kevin reached beneath the hem of the shirt hanging off of Edd’s shoulders and cleaned him in several hasty strokes. The genius pulled himself upward using the athlete’s shoulders, whimpering at the strain on his back and the friction of tissues on his raw flesh. In one graceful movement Kevin pulled the smaller male off the bed, hooking an arm around Double Dee’s waist and pulling him into the hallway. “How do we get to-”

“The basement is accessible through the kitchen - Kevin, my cactus! My planaria!”

“No time,” the redhead interrupted, racing down the stairs as the ravenette clung to him. There was a deafening crash and Edd screamed, feet scrambling for purchase as Kevin dragged him through the living room and around the kitchen table. The west wall of the house gave a sickening groan.

“Hold onto the railing,” Edd scolded hysterically as the athlete carried him deftly into the chill of the basement.

“Where should we go?” Kevin’s rasping voice had risen to all but a shout over the roar of the howling wind. Double Dee wriggled from his grip to pull him into the corner, fingers grasping at his shoulders frantically as he sank to his knees in the darkness.

“Piping is statistically proven to withstand high winds,” he cried, staring up into the darkness where he knew Kevin’s face was. “C-cover your head with your hands! Make-”

An immense crash rocked the house down to the foundation and the younger dove forward into the redhead’s chest. Kevin wrapped his arms around the brilliant boy and covered the thick mop of dark hair with his head, heartbeat racing above the overpowering roar of metal and wood groaning and buckling overhead. The concrete shook and the figure huddled beneath him gripped his waist, squeezing desperately, ten small pinpricks digging into his spine as the force of the wind rattled the roof and the walls and the earth below.

As quickly as it hit, it was over.

Kevin cracked his eyes open in the darkness, his ears ringing as he sucked in a breath. “Are you okay?”

There was no answer.

Drawing back, the redhead clutched the genius’s face in his hands. “ _Ed._ ”

The ravenette swallowed. “I’m all right, yes.”

“Okay.” The jock’s fingertips skirted over his parted lips, his neck, his slim shoulders. “Okay.”

They stared at each other in the deafening silence.

“W-we need to determine the level of damage.”

“Yeah.” Double Dee’s fingers were interlaced with Kevin’s now, and the jock stood, pulling him to his feet. “Okay.”

They climbed the stairs, the elder first, hand squeezed tightly as Eddward gripped the railing and willed his legs not to give out. “Thank heavens,” the genius uttered upon entering the kitchen. He took a step forward and let out a sharp breath when pain exploded up his spine. Kevin looped an arm around him, pulling him close.

“Hang onto me, babe.”

Double Dee was still for a moment, his shaky breathing easing into a quieter pattern. There was an unspoken question on his face and Kevin read it. Wordlessly he helped the ravenette up the stairs.

“Oh,” the genius breathed, stepping through the door to his room. “Oh, Kevin, thank goodness.”

As the smaller boy inspected his plants and pets, the athlete looked out the window and turned pale. “ _Holy shit_.”

Edd was hunched over his cactus uttering reassurances, blinking up at the redhead with big eyes. “Edd, oh my God.”

When he got to his feet, Double Dee’s jaw dropped. “Oh my _Lord._ ”

The cul-de-sac was littered with debris. Jimmy’s flower pots were nothing but a streak of black dirt and clay pieces scattered across the asphalt, and the lawn chairs from Nazz’s backyard were everywhere, one twisted into a bizarre piece of modern art around a bent lamppost. Shingles, siding, brick and insulation were strewn everywhere, haphazardly piled in tree branches and spread across the grass like confetti. Rolf’s barn was tilting precariously to the left, its boards splintered and tossed into the garden, and the pair could see glinting, jagged shards on the second floor of the foreigner’s house where the windows had been blown out. The radishes thrown everywhere would’ve made Kevin laugh, but his stare was fixed on the lot past Rolf’s.

Jonny’s house was gone.

“Kevin, I…”

The genius leaned heavily on the jock, beginning to shake once more. “What - what time is it? Has school let out yet? We have to…”

The redhead moved to wrap his arms around the petite boy but he staggered away, looking at the pile of clothes on the floor as though he knew he needed them but hadn’t the slightest idea how to put them to use. He found his briefs under the bed and sat down on the mattress to pull his pants on over them.

“Double Dee, wait.”

Hesitating for a moment, the younger blinked up at him. A moment later, Kevin’s pants hit him in the face.

By the time he had tugged them on, Edd was gone from the room. The jock was halfway out the door when what he’d seen on the bed dawned on him. He turned around to grab the genius’s beanie and hurried after him. The petite boy was hobbling toward the front door when the redhead caught him by the arms. The ravenette’s head whipped around, eyes huge as he tensed. “ _Kevin, don’t_ -”

Kevin shoved the hat down over his skull, giving him an annoyed look. “Oh…” Edd’s hands rose, fingers skirting over the fabric. “Thank you.”

 Wordlessly, the jock tucked a few tufts of black hair under his beanie and followed him out the door.

A chiming voice greeted the pair as their footsteps echoed across a section of bizarrely clean pavement. “ _Yes,_ Mom.”

Edd stopped, reaching out to find Kevin’s hand as he stared speechlessly at the mountain of debris. Warmth found his fingers but the redhead pulled away suddenly when the voice rang out once more.  Double Dee turned to see what was wrong, and followed his gaze to Nazz’s front porch.

“Yes. I promise. Everything’s okay. There are - a few trees are down and there’s no power.”

The blonde was leaning against the doorframe, a phone clutched to her ear. She was in a lime green bathrobe. Kevin called to her and she turned, waving and giving a small smile. In the dim light her tear-stained face glistened. “Yeah. Are you sure? Um, yeah … okay. Okay. Tell him I’m fine. I love you too, Mom … yeah, Kev’s right here. I’ll tell him.”

The redhead and the ravenette exchanged glances.

Nazz disappeared inside for a moment. When she emerged, she’d stepped into a pair of flip-flops. It took her a moment to navigate the piles of dirt and siding covering her porch steps before she broke into a run. Kevin caught her in a hug, his shoulder muffling her sobs. “Hey. You’re okay.”

The girl pulled away, kissing the redhead on the cheek. “Double Dee,” she uttered, rubbing the back of one hand over her face. Edd’s eyes went wide when she moved to wrap her arms around him. “Jesus. Are you okay?”

“I am,” the genius murmured, prickling with worry when the blonde’s chin rested on his Kevin-scented shirt. “M-my Lord, what time is it? Is everyone else-”

“They’re still in school,” she explained, frame still pressed to Edd’s. “They said on the radio that they kept everyone back because of the tornado warnings.” She released a shaky sigh, shuddering as she held back a sob. The genius patted her shoulder awkwardly. Double Dee stared at Kevin and Kevin stared at the avalanche of rubble. “Oh my God, Jonny, his family … it’s gone. It’s just gone.”

“Jesus.” Kevin’s gaze was still lost in the mass of splintered boards and plaster. When he spoke again, his tone made both Double Dee and Nazz look up at him. “ _Rolf_.”

The cheerleader slowly released Edd, her mouth falling open as her gaze shifted to the property next to the ravenette’s house. Over the almost completely-intact fence, the slope of the roof was stripped to its framing. The place where the tool shed should’ve been was empty air.

“Rolf! Hey, Rolf!” The redhead rounded the immense pile of debris, swearing and swatting away a chunk of insulation that fell on his shoulder. The gate took him several tugs to drag open, and when he succeeded, a mountain of shingles and broken branches spilled out toward him. “ _Rolf_! Are you home?”

Nazz trotted up behind him, tightening her sash and attempting to peer over the redhead’s shoulder. “Kevin, don’t scratch yourself,” Double Dee fretted before he could stop himself. “You’re not wearing a shirt…”

“Shhh.” The jock held an index finger up to his lips, giving the genius a reproachful look over his shoulder. There was an endlessly stretching moment, the immense silence of destruction thick above their heads.

Kevin leapt nimbly over the pile of branches and trotted into the yard. By the time Nazz and Edd had clambered over the avalanche blocking the gate (Double Dee covering his eyes in horror when he offered a hand to Nazz and he caught a glimpse of her short shorts,) he had reached Rolf’s barn. Boards were stripped erratically from the side nearest to the path of destruction like they’d been coated with invisible paint. Though the fence was inexplicably undamaged, the rubble that was Jonny’s house spilled over it, adding streaks of metal and wood to the uprooted vegetables and obliterated bales of hay that had overtaken the yard. When Kevin began talking, his voice too quiet for either to hear, Nazz took a cautious step forward.

When Rolf’s voice bubbled out in reply, she and Double Dee ran to the barn’s entrance.

If the scene hadn’t been so pitiful, the genius might’ve chuckled. The pig and the cow the neighborhood had listened to the foreigner scold for years were on either side of him, Wilfred oinking urgently and softly. The small flock of chickens was huddled between them, all but a single hen scooped into his arms and twitching violently to escape.

“Hey, man, are you okay?”

The blue-haired male blinked up at Kevin, considering his answer. “Rolf is uninjured, yes.”

“Good God. Why didn’t you go in the basement or something if you knew it was stormin’ so hard?” The redhead knelt to pat Rolf’s cow between her ears.

“And leave the son of a shepherd’s animals to be blown into next January? Nonsense!”

He rose slowly, the armful of chickens squawking indignantly when he released them to scuttle around the damaged building. Kevin waited as the foreign boy pointed a finger at each of the birds, muttering names as he accounted for each. “At least you’re not hurt or anything.”

“Is everyone here, Rolf?” Double Dee clasped his hands, shadowing the doorway beside Nazz.

“Gretchen, Hilda, Ingrid, Henrietta … Gretchen, Hilda, Ingrid, Henrietta…”

When Rolf met their gazes, his face was pale and his voice was barely audible. “Gertrude.” His mouth hung open for a second, staring straight through the redhead. Suddenly he was present again. “Are there any unaccompanied fowl in the yard?”

“Uhhh, no,” Kevin uttered, shaking his head. “No, man, I didn’t see anything.”

“Gertrude … Gertrude.” Rolf pushed past the redhead, bumping Edd and Nazz carelessly as he left the barn. “ _Gertrude!_ There is … this is no time for shenanigans!”

His voice echoed oddly off of the pavement and houses, as if the thick, empty air had encased the cul-de-sac in its own bubble.

“Rolf.” Double Dee clasped his hands over his ribcage. “I-it’s highly improbable that, in this amount of rubble-”

“ _Silence_.”

The foreigner spun to face the genius, fists clenched, tears filling his eyes.

“If you will not assist Rolf, you will leave.”

Double Dee stared at the other male in silence. After a long moment the taller boy stepped away, cupping his dirt-caked hands to his mouth. “Gertrude! This is no time for frivolity … Gertrude!”

Nazz was the first to follow, scampering carefully out into the cul-de-sac and beginning to move from yard to yard, lifting up chunks of plywood and tangled piles of branches. Kevin looked at Edd, and Edd wrapped his arms around himself, letting out a shaky breath. “Come on,” the redhead finally uttered, shutting the barn door to keep the rest of the livestock from escaping. He brushed a hand over the genius’s arm for a moment before following his friends. “Gertrude? Uh - hey Gertrude! Come home already.”

As he cautiously combed through debris and struggled to calculate where a hen might’ve blown in such a volatile wind, Double Dee felt himself slipping in and out of reality. Seeing the spoils of a violently deconstructed house was tolerable, even fascinating. What sent a pang of horror through him was the _belongings_ tossed amongst the material. A comb with teeth missing, still wrapped with almost peach-blonde hair, sticking out from under a flat piece of varnished wood. A baseball that had someone’s signature scrawled across it in sloppy cursive. The genius extracted the ball from the mess, setting it aside on a clean patch of sidewalk and deciding to ask Kevin if he knew whose it was. There was a shredded piece of fabric that was so wet with mud that he couldn’t decipher the design. Beneath a precariously-balanced piece of metal Double Dee found a picture frame that had been snapped in two. The photo inside had absorbed water, and the ink had bled into a blackish mess. He wondered if it was a recent picture. He then wondered if it was the only portrait of someone long-dead, and his heart twisted painfully in his chest. Rising from his knees, he shifted back into a careful checklist of places he hadn’t looked, holding all urges toward sentiment at arm’s length. He barely registered Jonny jogging down the sidewalk and stopping, stone-still, his mouth agape as he stared at the space where his house should’ve been. He heard stunned, hushed voices, and as Rolf and Kevin continued to call out, he distantly listened to Nazz as she murmured reassurances and ushered the bald kid over to sit down on her porch.

“Gertrude! Gertrude … where are you? Gertrude, stop this nonsense … where are you?” The foreigner had reached the end of the cul-de-sac. Dropping the piece of plywood he’d lifted, Rolf scrubbed his grimy and bloodied hands on his jeans, his head sagging.

“Rolf.”

Kevin took a tentative step toward his friend, kicking aside a box that had spewed envelopes across the ground. He reached out to touch the boy’s shoulder with tentative fingers.

The taller male jerked away, turning his head to meet the jock’s green eyes. “ _Don’t touch me_.”

Kevin’s arm dropped to his side and he stared at his friend, the boy’s face smeared with dirt and tears.

“Rolf? Kevin?”

“Hey.” The redhead tried to compose his face, meeting Jimmy’s stare. Sarah was standing beside him, her blinding pink bag slung over her shoulder. The effeminate boy hurried toward the pair, clasping his hands to his chest as he looked up at the jock with huge eyes.

“Good heavens … they were saying on the radio that no tornadoes touched down anywhere. Rolf, are you okay? Is that big mess Jonny’s _house?_ ”

“Nazz is sittin’ with him.” The redhead stuffed his hands in his pockets, his pale green eyes tired and downcast. “Rolf was in his barn when it got bad. We can’t find … we don’t know where one of his chickens is.”

“ _Gertrude,_ ” Rolf corrected. He had stopped sobbing and his voice was hoarse. “Gertrude is missing … Rolf is truly a pitiful excuse for a son of a shepherd.”

Jimmy looked at Rolf and then at Kevin before setting his spotless corduroy book bag on the ground and rolling up his sweater sleeves. “Sarah, come here.”

In a matter of minutes, Sarah and Jimmy were up to their knees in the mess that was Jonny’s house, calling for the chicken as Nazz sat with the bald kid on her porch. She’d draped a blanket over his shoulders, and he’d called his parents on her house phone before falling silent, clutching Plank to his chest as the cheerleader tried to coax him to drink a glass of water. Kevin sat down awkwardly on the curb next to his friend but was too wary of another outburst to say anything. Double Dee lingered a few feet away, gazing at the sky with wide eyes as he searched for any sign that more bad weather might develop.

“Jeez, what the hell are you guys - why’s Rolf cryin’? What’s - holy _fuck._ ”

Everyone save for Jonny looked up to see Eddy gaping at the remains of the bald kid’s house. “ _Eddy,_ ” Double Dee exclaimed, hurrying to the short male and hugging him. “Are you all right, Eddy?”

“’Course I’m all right.” he muttered, shooing the scholar off. “My stupid mom made the school keep me back until the tornado watches expired. Has Jonny _seen_ this mess?”

“Nazz is sitting with him.” The ravenette turned to look at the blonde, who was still poking at the strange kid with her glass’s straw. “I think his parents are picking him up to stay at a relative’s house … Eddy, where’s Ed?”

“Huh?” The stocky male blinked. “Ed’s not here?”

“No,” Double Dee replied, the note of hysteria in his voice making Kevin glance up at him. “No, I thought he was at school with you.”

“What?”

Sarah straightened, her eyes immense.

“Ed wasn’t with me,” Eddy said, throwing his hands out to mask his concern with annoyance. “I haven’t seen him since lunch.”

“I didn’t see him when we were leaving,” Jimmy volunteered, pushing his sweater sleeves up further. “Sarah?”

The redheaded girl’s voice had fallen to a waver, a piece of hair falling between her eyes. “Why … why weren’t you with him?”

“I’m not his _God-damn babysitter_ ,” Eddy shouted.

There was a moment of dead silence, the group of teenagers watching the short male and the redhead. Sarah made a small noise, her permanent scowl fading into an expression that made her almost unrecognizable. “Ed … _Ed. Ed, where are you? Ed._ ”

Double Dee turned, his mind stuttering over what had to be error. “Jimmy, are you sure you haven’t seen Ed?”

The effeminate boy ignored him, hurrying to his friend and taking her hands. “Sarah, please. Think logically. Don’t cry - we need to figure out…”

“I don’t know,” Eddy was muttering, staring at the pair from across the cul-de-sac with pleading eyes. “Why would I see him when - I was in the office for half an hour.” He flashed a look at the genius and there was an almost-hidden gleam of panic in his eyes. “Double Dee, think. You can figure out where he is. He’s okay, right? He’s gotta be. Right?”

“I don’t know, Eddy,” he murmured softly. Sarah let loose a frantic cry and jerked herself from Jimmy’s grip.

 “ED, WHERE ARE YOU?”

“We have to be rational.” Eddward met Kevin’s eyes, the horror pulling his lungs tight overriding any caution he should’ve felt. “Sarah, please, we … I’ll compose a list of areas to search … please don’t cry, it’s just a matter of…”

Upon seeing the moisture filling the scholar’s eyes, Kevin took a step toward him. “Edd-”

“Just a minute, please.” Before the jock could reach him, Double Dee started across the cul-de-sac and walked to Sarah and Ed’s house, feet thoughtlessly knocking garbage out of the way. He tried the door and found it unlocked.

When the genius disappeared inside, Sarah fell silent, brushing past Jimmy to follow him. Nazz mumbled a comforting remark to Jonny before setting her glass down and hurrying after Sarah.

Double Dee paced through the house, zombielike, opening the door to the basement and descending the stairs. Sarah and Nazz cautiously followed, Jimmy catching up to them as Eddy and Kevin reached the doorstep. Rolf trailed in behind them, the dirt and snot smeared on his face forgotten. The only sound ringing out was the thump of seven pairs of shoes on creaky wooden stairs.

“Ed?”

The genius stepped cautiously into the cluttered room, the dust in the air winking in the stream of dim light coming in the windows. The smallest whimper was his reply, and the relief that spilled into him felt oddly distant.

“Ed. It’s all right, Ed. We’re all here, Eddy and Sarah are here.”

He was huddled in his closet, stuffed in amongst the stacks of comic books and action figures. Ed blinked up at him, sniffling. “She was so scared, Double Dee.”

The ravenette opened his mouth, but Ed answered his question when he shifted a little, turning to face the room. The chicken in his arms warbled quietly and turned her head to look up at the group. Rolf let out a cry of relief. “The wind was getting louder and louder and her feathers were all muddy. Poor little dickens.”

“Oh, Ed,” Sarah wailed, shoving past the genius to throw her arms around her brother. Gertrude squawked and flapped out of the boy’s grasp, scuttling around on the carpet before finding Rolf and pecking at his pant leg. Kevin cringed and waved away a stray feather.

Ed patted his sibling on the head, blinking up at the group. “Is Sarah sick, guys?”

“Thank Jesus,” Jimmy breathed.

Nazz smiled tiredly beside him.


	14. Backhoes and Snickerdoodles

“Oh, I know, I know! It was a _giant mutant weasel!_ Resurrected from the depths by its children.”

Double Dee looked up from the textbook in his lap. Eddy dropped his pencil.

“…no, Ed,” the genius finally uttered. “The answer for _x_ isn’t a giant mutant weasel.”

“How’d you get to high school?” Eddy shot the slowest of the Eds a skeptical look, kicking wildly to balance himself as he reached over the edge of the bed to find his pencil.

"Prayer and persistence,” Ed answered instantly, giving a pleased grin. Eddy raised an eyebrow.

“We’re gonna need more than persistence to this scam rollin’.” The shortest male paused to chew on his eraser, a molar catching on the metal fastening it to the pencil and making a tiny squeak. “If we play our cards right, we could get tons of people to come to our study group. Think of all the _freshmen!_ ”

Ed’s lazy smile faded, replaced by a stare of horror. “Did freshmen do it, Eddy?”

“Gentlemen, please!”

The pair looked at their brilliant friend, Ed blinking his right eye and then his left, Eddy once again gnawing on his writing utensil.

“We have to stay on task! Do you have any idea how rare it is to be given an additional day to study for final exams?”

“Studying stinks,” Eddy growled. The genius made a concerted effort not to gag at the saliva glimmering on his friend’s mangled eraser. “Stupid Jonny, gettin’ a whole extra week. Don’t teachers take vacation? Why couldn’t _my_ house get hit by a tornado?”

“Did a tornado do it, Eddy?!” The alarm was now written plainly across Ed’s face.

“Quit it, Lumpy,” the shortest of the Eds snapped back. He glanced over his shoulder towards the rumble of backhoes and dump trucks. “We should be out there goin’ through junk…”

“Plus sign plus minus sign equals an equal divided by a square,” agreed Ed. The beeping of heavy machinery reversing seemed oddly fitting, Double Dee thought.

“The city hired its own workers to do it to avoid any lawsuits or gas line damage, Eddy. You know how overbearing the local legislature has become.”

“BEARS,” Ed bellowed, and Eddy jumped so hard he fell backwards off of his mattress. “Did bears attack you, Double Dee?!”

“Oh, um…” The genius’s face heated up as clasped his hands. The constant muted shouting of a million guilty worries eagerly crashed over his thoughts. Of _course_ someone had noticed something. Had his window been cracked? Had a bruise poked out from under the collar of the shirt he’d been wearing yesterday?

Swallowing thickly, the ravenette hunched his shoulders, subconsciously covering more of his neck with his shirt. “Why, Ed, I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“ _Yesterday_ , Double Dee,” Ed insisted, as if his sockheaded friend was an utter moron. “You looked like a piece of gum stuck to a shoe. Oh, were you saving chickens too?”

“W-well, I-” Edd swallowed, now tangling his fingers together nervously. Eddy was eyeing him suspiciously. “I did seek shelter in the basement when it became apparent that the winds were approaching dangerous levels. That should account for any disheveled appearance, yes?”

The yellow-skinned boy leaned toward Eddy, holding a hand before his face to obscure his words. “I think bears did it, Eddy.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, Ed,” the shortest of the trio replied, turning his attention back to the study guide he was doodling on. “Double Dee’s got secrets now. It’s none of our business.”

“Oh, come now, Eddy.” The genius glared at his best friend, the pounding of his heart met with a painful twist of his stomach at the other’s words. “Surely you have a few secrets of your own, and Ed and I respect that. Everyone appreciates a certain measure of privacy.”

The shortest Ed glanced up at the ravenette wordlessly before putting his pencil back into his mouth. “Whatever. Teach us algebra already.”

Frown tugging at his lips, Double Dee glanced back at Ed’s neutral expression before turning his attention to the equations in his book.

-x-

The guttural rumble of a backhoe‘s hydraulics thrummed through the earth, rattling the back of Kevin’s throat and prompting him to clear it for the hundredth time. “Dude,” he called, pulling his hands from his pockets and shuffling from foot to foot. “Quit it already.”

The teal-haired male ignored him and dropped to the ground. “No, I’m gonna make it.”

“You’re gonna die.”

“ _No_ , I’m gonna make it.”

The redhead rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, and Nat crouched, wiggling his butt comically before leaping for the top of Rolf’s fence. His fingers hooked over the boards and his immaculate white shoes scuffed the wood for purchase. The jock looked away, unable to bear the secondhand embarrassment any longer, ignoring the hyperactive teen’s shout about “fuckin’ splinters.”

"Give it a rest already, Nat.”

Thwumping back to the ground, Nathan brushed off his shirt before pulling a tiny sliver of wood from his palm. “Ugh. Kev, come on. Just put me on your shoulders so I can see. I’m not leaving until we do this.”

“Man, no. Why do you always gotta turn everything into some weird thing where your junk is too close to my face and you’re doing something you could get arrested for?”

The shorter teen huffed melodramatically, throwing his arms up in frustration. “My thighs are like a fucking shiatsu massage and you know it.”

“And I wish I didn’t,” the redhead retorted. Nathan narrowed his eyes, sticking his bottom jaw out. It was The Look of A Thousand Staredowns, and Kevin had grown far too wise to fight it. “Just don’t get my shirt dirty,” the jock muttered, refusing to acknowledge his friend’s triumphant squeal.

Approximately twenty seconds later, the iridescent flash of Nathan Goldberg’s hair bobbed over the edge of Rolf’s fence, wobbling to and fro before his arms flew out to steady himself. His bright gaze scanned the property and he pointedly ignored the loud swear from below. “There he is! Rolf! _Rolf!_ ”

Kevin glared at a knot in the fencing, trying to steady his friend while keeping his hands as far away as possible from his backside.

“Rooollllllf! _Rolf_. Rolf! Rolf? ROLF.”

Finally, the foreigner turned and squinted over his shoulder. His mouth moved, the high cadence of his voice rising just barely above the roar of machinery. Nat wiggled violently, sending Kevin into a string of curses as he re-planted his feet. “WHAAAT?” Nat screamed.

“ _Yes!_ ” Rolf’s voice slowly became intelligible as he approached, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He’d arranged the splintered branches into a pile next to the barn and was tossing shingles and siding into a wheelbarrow. “What do you want, birds-and-the-bees Nathan?”

“Hey, can we help with anything?” Kevin attempted to squint between two of the vertical boards, finding only a tiny slit of light.

“Your olive branch of misguided pleasantries is acknowledged, but this is the duty of a son of a shepherd.”

“But-”

“Good day! Goodbye! Gersploosh!”

“ _What?_ ”

“Okay, Nat,” the redhead grunted from beneath, “Get your junk off the back of my neck, man.”

“But - aaah, okay.” The shorter male cautiously dropped down, caught by the redhead’s elbows fitting into his knees. He grabbed at Kevin’s collarbone, making the jock wheeze, and upon catching sight of Kevin’s scowl when he looked over his shoulder, Nat released his grasp, his back hitting the ground with a whump.

Kevin hadn’t had the opportunity to let go of Nathan’s legs when a familiar voice rang out behind them.

“There you guys are … uh … yeah. Why is it that you guys are doing something that looks both gay and illegal every time I see you together?”

Nat grinned up at the cheerleader. “Greetin’s, fair lady.”

Kevin let go of his friend’s knees, and the green-haired boy grunted when his feet fell to the grass. “Heya, Nazz.”

“Hi,” the blonde replied, one eyebrow rising until it disappeared behind her bangs. “I was gonna ask you guys if you wanted to hang out with me, but if you’re busy-”

“Nah, that’s cool.” Kevin glowered at Nat, still sprawled out on the ground. Nat pointedly ignored him.

“Rolf won’t let us help him clean up his yard.” The teal-haired male scrambled to his feet, brushing his sweater off and running a hand through his hair. “So now we’re bored.”

 “I made cookies if you want some,” responded Nazz, interrupting before Kevin could protest his friend’s inclusive sentence. The redhead had clamped his mouth shut, and when he opened it again to accept, Nat drowned him out with a squeal. He’d sprinted off toward the blonde girl’s house before Nazz could blink.

-x-

Not thirty minutes later, the trio had gone through nearly two batches of chocolate chip cookies and a single batch of snickerdoodles. Nazz was halfway through a Sprite, as was Kevin, his bendy-straw included without having to ask.

Nathan sat across from the pair, one arm hanging over the back of Nazz’s chair. He had pinned three bows in his hair in front of her mirror before slathering on a coral-colored product she’d identified as “lip stain balm,” taking up the habit of neurotically touching it up every few minutes. He had finished three Sprites and a Mountain Dew.

“Anyway, it just sucks. I’m really worried about her. Mom told her she could come and stay here if she needed to, but then we felt really bad, because, like, we can’t invite Emmett to come out. Mom thinks the last thing this neighborhood needs is another teenage boy.”

“Bullshit,” Nat chirped, taking a noisy gulp of his pop. “The more butts, the better.”

“Yeah? Then he should stay at your house,” Kevin uttered dryly.

The teal-haired boy shrugged, an action greatly hindered by the fact that the arm he’d draped over the back of the chair was asleep. “Hey, if rent can be paid in booty access, I’m in.”

Nazz set her Sprite down on a pile of beauty magazines, licking her lips and smiling slyly. “Speaking of booty…”

When Nat blinked, his eyes going wide and flicking from the blonde to Kevin, the redhead turned to find his best friend fixing him with a look that made his stomach sink to the floor. “Uh…”

“Dude.” Nat wriggled around until he was sitting up straight. “Dude. What?”

“Oh my God,” the jock murmured, lifting his hands as if to shield himself. “Don’t.”

“Kevin’s seeing somebody.”The redhead had time to flinch before the hyperactive male screeched. “DUDE.”

The redhead had time to flinch before the hyperactive male screeched. “DUDE.”

Hiding his blush beneath a scowl, he glared at the floor. “ _Seriously_ , Nazz?”

“DUUUUUDE.” Nat kicked his feet violently. “Is he _really?_ ”

In reply, the blonde reached over and yanked the redhead’s shirt up to reveal the deep, crisscrossing claw marks lining his ribs. When Kevin had swatted the cheerleader away and leapt halfway across the bed, he turned back to Nathan, mouth opening and closing in desperation for any believable explanation. The teal-haired male’s enormous, open-mouthed smile was framed by his hands, which he’d clapped to his cheeks.

“Yep.” Nazz nodded, satisfaction oozing from her voice. “He spent the whole day yesterday running around shirtless. I can’t believe nobody said anything.”

“That’s because normal people were focused on the tornado.” Kevin returned to frowning at Nazz’s carpet, a hand absentmindedly smoothing his shirt down over the scratches. The chair creaked loudly as Nathan wiggled around on it.

"Shush. Now’s the time for girl talk, not being a big ole brooding hunk.” When Nazz giggled, Nat talked over her. “Blonde?”

“God dammit, Nat.”

“No, not blonde. Brunette?”

The ADD-riddled teen and the cheerleader were met with a burning, embarrassment-filled silence.

“Redhead? Oh. God. It’s not Sarah. Is it Sarah? _Please_ tell me it isn’t Sarah.”

“It’s _not_ Sarah,” Nazz and Kevin replied, nearly in tandem.

“Whoo! Thank _Jesus_. Is it someone I know? Tell me, Kevin, is the tuchus a work of art like nothing you’ve ever seen before?”

“Sorta...” Nazz covered her smile with one hand, and Kevin cursed the way his heart fluttered and his gut twisted painfully when he visualized the adorably petite individual in question.

“He won’t tell me who it is, though.” Nazz nudged the redhead with her foot.

“Good thing I’m the greatest officially unofficial detective Peach Creek as ever seen.” Nathan tipped a pair of invisible sunglasses down to sit over his eyes. “I charge a simple flat rate of one booty grab per hour of service.”

Nazz quirked an eyebrow. “How many booty-grabs of my lip stain do you think you’re wearing?”

The fidgety kid’s grin faded. “God dammit.”

Undeterred, the blonde returned her long-lashed gaze to Kevin. “Whoever it is, if you look this bad, they’re probably in a full-body cast.”

“Everything’s fine, Nazz.” Swallowing, the redhead met her eyes for a moment before looking away. “Everything’s cool.”

“More like hot,” Nat supplied unnecessarily. “Your abs look like a giant tic-tac-toe board, dude.”

“Are you into, like, weird stuff? Kevin, are you into _bondage?_ ”

“You’re givin’ me a headache, Nazz.”

When neither the cheerleader nor the teal-haired boy babbled over him with demanding, teasing questions, Kevin let out a long, quiet breath and looked up. The two were watching him with stares so intense that the jock felt naked.

Settling into a position that covered his lap with his arms, Kevin rasped, “I’m not gonna tell you who it is.”

“Oh, we’ll find out,” the pair echoed. The jock felt all the blood drain from his face.

“I sure as hell hope not.”


End file.
